- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Opinion
Penrith snapped their five-game losing streak with a thumping win over the Roosters but the jury is still out on whether the premiers are well and truly back.
They recorded their first win on Australian soil since last year’s grand final to trounce a depleted Roosters side 40-12 to break their slump of five straight losses since beating Cronulla to kick off the season in Las Vegas.
Penrith could face sanctions from the NRL, likely in the form of a fine rather than losing their competition points, after they briefly had 14 players on the field in the first half when there was a sideline stuff-up during an interchange that wasn’t between Scott Sorensen and Izack Tago.
Earlier on Saturday, the Broncos blew two big moments in a dramatic finish as the Warriors snatched a 20-18 extra-time triumph.
Brisbane could have won the game with a last-minute field goal but made a mess of the play and then booted the ball out on the full to kick off extra time and shoot themselves in the foot.
Penrith in the previous five years were ultra clinical in everything they did.
This season they have been sloppy.
Last-tackle options have been clunky, passes from dummy half are going to ground and their attention to detail has been sadly lacking.
In the first half it looked like more of the same as they coughed up a rollball handover against the Roosters amid a cacophony of carelessness that is the antithesis of what took them to five straight grand finals and four premierships on the trot.
Finally, in the second half at Allianz Stadium something resembling the Panthers of old re-emerged.
They dominated the middle and Nathan Cleary capitalised to send support players through gaps on either side of the ruck with the premiers running in five tries to convert their 12-6 lead into a 36-12 trouncing.
There were also encouraging signs from young five-eighth Blaize Talagi, who scored a try in easily his best game in a Panthers jersey since his off-season switch from Parramatta.
Isaiah Papali’i scores a try. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
“I was pumped for him, he seems like a little brother at the moment,” Nathan Cleary said, describing their partnership as a “work in progress”.
“You just forget he’s only 20 years old, he’s so raw but he is so willing to learn. We’re starting to build those reps on the field.”
This was not the kind of win which will strike fear into the hearts of opponents – they were up against a team with a rookie half and a 2-4 record – but it can be a turning point for Ivan Cleary’s squad.
If they can build on this performance to get back on track after five straight losses, all is not lost.
Their other off-season signing, Isaiah Papalii, also had his best game for his new club, clawing his way to a try off a Mitch Kenny grubber but was also placed on report for a high shot so he could be in judiciary trouble.
Mark Nawaqanitawase continued his impressive switch to rugby league by setting up the first try of the match.
His superb hands gave winger Daniel Tupou the glimmer of space he needed down the left flank to plant the ball next to the cornerpost despite Dylan Edwards’ desperate cover tackle.
But the former Wallabies winger was caught out in defence a couple of times as Cleary swung the ball through the hands down their right edge with Edwards catching Nawaqanitawase in two minds as the attack hurtled in his direction.
While it was not entirely his fault, Nawaqanitawase and Tupou were exposed by Edwards in two near identical attacking raids which presented winger Paul Alamoti with an untouched stroll to the stripe.
The Roosters have done well to be competitive this season but without Billy Smith, Angus Crichton, Lindsay Collins, Junior Pauga, Sam Walker, Brandon Smith and Egan Butcher, they were always going to be up against it even though they had upset Penrith last month.
To make matters worse, Nat Butcher limped off with medial ligament damage after just 10 minutes and will likely be out for a month as Trent Robinson considers dusting off his boots to make a comeback.
Penrith are likely to cop a fine after they momentarily had 14 players on the field midway through the first half.
Scott Sorensen was brought to the sideline after dislocating his finger to receive treatment but did not leave the playing arena as the trainer performed the always painful to watch, much more painful to experience, push to get it back into place.
Panthers reserve Izack Tago thought he was going on and impatiently threw his interchange card on the turf before sprinting onto the field.
But with Sorensen re-entering the fray, Penrith officials screamed at Tago to get back on the bench and the Panthers were docked two interchange rotations for their indiscretion and will likely cop a hefty fine after the NRL football department reviews the sideline hijinks.
“It was a mistake,” Panthers coach Ivan Cleary admitted.
“Soz had a dislocated finger and we thought it must have been broken. He ran to the sideline and Izack, who has never been on the bench before, I don’t think he really knew what to do, so he didn’t give his card to someone.
“It was the old trick; ‘I’ve just got to go on, so I’ll throw it on the ground.’ It was a rookie error.
“It was a balls-up. It cost us two interchanges. We paid for it.”
Brisbane did not deserve to win but they could have. And they should have.
But they choked away two key moments when the game was on the line and came away with nothing.
After fighting back from 18-6 down with two late tries, the second a fortuitous one to Reece Walsh after an in-goal scramble for a high kick, they had worked their way into field goal range.
With specialist marksman Adam Reynolds ready for the money shot, Ben Hunt bobbled the ball at dummy-half and the costly split-second brain fade meant the chance was botched and the Warriors hung on for extra time.
And then Walsh booted the kick-off out on the full to present Luke Metcalf with the chance to boot the home side to glory from the halfway line and with the wind at his back, he shook off his four previous misses to nail the winning shot.
“It’s unreal. I remember playing a game here in 2023 when Shaun Johnson in golden point hit a field goal against the Raiders,” Metcalf told Fox League.
“All that was going on in my mind was, ‘I can’t wait to get in a moment like that’. I missed a field goal earlier, but it was great to ice that moment.”
Warriors coach Andrew Webster said the half wanted the kick and “had complete confidence in himself”.
Reynolds said Brisbane’s poor performance in the first half was the reasons for the loss, not their double trouble late in the piece.
“We lost that game in the first half. We weren’t good enough by our standards,” he said.
Brisbane were unlucky that a length-of-the-field try to Selwyn Cobbo was disallowed on the stroke of half-time, after Metcalf missed a penalty goal attempt, with Chris Butler ruling a forward pass from Kotoni Staggs even though it looked to be flat at worst.
But the better side definitely won this match and that’s back-to-back losses for the Broncos after going down at home to the Roosters and although they are in the top eight with a 4-3 record, they are yet to prove they can be anything more than a team that will make up the numbers if they qualify for the finals.
Going into this game without injured stars Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and James Fisher-Harris as well as suspended centre Rocco Berry, the Warriors were supposedly on a hiding to nothing against the star-studded Broncos.
But nobody told them that they had no chance. Or if they did, they didn’t believe it.
The Warriors ran into a howling wind in the first half and impressive rookie Leka Halasima’s try cancelled out an early one to Broncos hooker Billy Walters.
Ed Kosi and Metcalf stretched their lead to 12 before Jesse Arthars and Walsh clawed Brisbane back to level terms even though the Warriors had scored four tries to three.
They have overtaken Brisbane to be third on the ladder midway through Round 7 with a 4-2 record and with Berry and Nicoll-Klokstad due back next round and Fisher-Harris (pectoral), Dallin Watene-Zelezniak (wrist) and Tuivasa-Sheck a couple of weeks later, Wahs fans can start dreaming of a return to 2023’s astonishing surge into the top four.
Webster was pleased by the way his team fought off adversity.
“There were three or four times where we could have thrown in the towel but we kept finding a way and that’s what we’ve been talking about.” he said.
“We weren’t the smartest team but we were certainly the hungrier team.”
Bringing in Michael Maguire after the removal of club legend Kevin Walters as coach was supposed to instil a tough edge to the Broncos.
They are still show ponies. Too much style not enough substance.
Payne Haas and Patrick Carrigan make an impact up front but after each week is there any other forward that you notice game to game?
When the Broncos are on the front foot they can make opponents pay but when the arm wrestle is on, they struggle to stay in the contest by doing the dirty work that doesn’t get headlines but generates momentum.
If cracking the whip at training doesn’t yield better results, Maguire needs to make some personnel changes.
“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, we need to be smarter,” he said.
“We control how we go about our game and our errors, and it put pressure on our tryline.”
For anyone who had to suffer through Walters’ over-excited commentary in the Roosters vs Panthers game on Fox League, they probably wished he was still in Brisbane’s coaching box.
with AAP