‘It’s an extraordinary time’: Penrith Panthers great lifts lid on team’s brilliant consistency
Penrith great Greg Alexander lifts the lid on why – despite the salary cap pressures – the Panthers are now in their fifth straight NRL grand final.
In a competition with a salary cap and other equalisation measures, the Penrith Panthers have ruthlessly dominated all opposition in recent years.
On Sunday the club is into their fifth straight NRL grand final and going for their fourth straight premiership title.
Panthers director and former premiership player Greg Alexander says while the club is in “purple patch”, it also works tirelessly to recruit and retain the best players – and he attributes that to their brilliant run.
“It doesn’t happen often in the history of the game that everything falls into place,” Alexander says.
“We’ve just happened to drop into that purple patch, that twilight zone of everything just fitting, from the administration, the CEO Matt Cameron, to the recruitment to the juniors, to the senior players.”
And just like the club they are playing today, who have lost the “big three” in Cooper Cronk, Billy Slater and Cameron Smith, Penrith, too, have been able to consistently regenerate their team when big stars have left.
The Panthers have lost $3.4 million worth of talent leaving the club since winning the 2021 premiership.
Due to salary cap pressure they’ve lost talent such as Api Koroisau, Matt Burton, Viliame Kikau, Stephen Crichton, Spencer Leniu, Jaeman Salmon and Kurt Capewell.
At the end of this season, Tiger-bound Jarome Luai and Sunia Turuva will leave, again because of the salary cap, while prop James Fisher-Harris is departing on compassionate grounds and heading back to his homeland New Zealand and a four-year Warriors deal.
Despite this, Penrith have always been able to recruit footballers to fill the void of those gone.
The Panthers have an 11-person committee overseeing player recruitment – including Alexander, Cameron and coach Ivan Cleary – working to regenerate the club.
“Penrith are playing the club that’s been pretty good at doing what Penrith are trying to emulate,” Alexander said.
“And when you look at what [the Melbourne Storm] done, you look at the key players that they’ve had over the years, and they’re replaced the big three with the big three.
They’ve been able to build a team around those key players through great recruitment. And we’ve been able to do it by bringing youngsters through Penrith juniors and filling key positions with a couple of very judicious sort of buying from outside.”
“But I think the thing that stands out for this group of players is that we have senior players who are so critical in setting the tone. And you know what the coach is looking for from those senior players? To then emulate what he wants in terms of accountability and professionalism.
“The culture is driven by the senior players and our senior players are just the best.”
Alexander has said that had this Panthers side existed in a salary-cap free era, they could have won “10 premierships”. Alexander believes they could sit alongside the great St George sides of the 1950s and ’60s and South Sydney of the late 1960s and early ’70s.
While recruitment is key, Alexander also says their “culture” is one that is always driven to be better, even when they win an NRL premiership.
“These players are always trying to improve,” Alexander said. “They don’t rest on their laurels. It’s an amazing thing. They’ve got this ability to keep pushing for more.
“When clubs look like they might win two in a row, they’ve always fallen over, apart from the Roosters in ’18/’19 but they’ve always just fallen the last hurdle for some reason.
“But I think that reason is that this team has the ability to go, ‘Right, that’s done. We need to improve. This is where we need to get better.’ It’s extraordinary.”
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