Over the past four years, Penrith have won NRL games just about every way a team can — there' have been blowouts, narrow wins, comprehensive displays and matches where they looked like they'd won it before they even hit the field.
Ivan Cleary and his charges have built an incredible winning machine, one of the very best in NRL history, and sit on the verge of rugby league immortality as they chase a third-straight premiership this weekend when they face Brisbane.
So with the Panthers chasing their place in forever, these are the five games that sum up their rise from the foot of the mountains to the stars.
They might have had bigger wins, and better ones, but these five are the most important. The only rule was no grand finals — because that's just too easy.
In early 2020, Penrith's greatness was still coming into view. (Getty Images: Ryan Pierse)
Nobody really sees a juggernaut coming until it's already too late. If it was easy to see all the pieces moving into place, everybody would build one.
Six weeks into the 2020 season, Penrith were still getting their act together – Nathan Cleary spent some time on the sideline due to suspension, Caleb Aekins was filling in for an injured Dylan Edwards at fullback and Isaah Yeo and James Fisher-Harris both spent a game or two at second row rather than in the middle.
The Panthers had all the pieces but nobody, not even the club themselves, could have realised how well all those pieces would fit together.
This match against the Storm, which was played behind closed doors at Campbelltown Stadium, was the first time the Panthers as we know them today came into view. Going back now, it's like seeing a band do a demo of a song that's since become a hit.
The spine of Edwards, Jarome Luai, Nathan Cleary and Api Koroisau played together for the first time. Fisher-Harris and Yeo are together in the middle. Everything is where it's supposed to be.
None of them are the forces of nature they would soon become, but they're in the right place. They were aimed and it was time to fire.
Back then, any Penrith win over the Storm was a big deal, and at the time it was something of an announcement there might be something going on out at Penrith. There was something going on alright, and it's been going on ever since.
The Panthers have refused to compromise their hard-nosed style. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)
People may enjoy the rise of a team but after they have risen high enough for long enough, those same people start waiting for the fall and the longer they have to wait, the more desperately and fervently they crave it.
After that win over Melbourne in early 2020, the Panthers lost one game in the next 11 months – it just happened to be the biggest game of all. The grand final loss to the Storm was the kind of defeat that could have derailed Penrith permanently but they stayed right on the job, winning their opening four matches of the following season.
Then they faced the Raiders who, at the time, were a competition heavyweight on the back of a rugged, physical, confrontational style. Penrith, to put it bluntly, beat the Raiders down in a 30-10 victory filled with spite, niggle and ill-feeling from both sides.
They were the same team before they belted the Raiders as they were after. But the way they were talked about and considered was never the same again.
This is the game where Penrith's bulletproof confidence and brash, youthful style — the very same style that helped them take the competition by storm the year before — was rebranded as arrogance, a trope which was inaccurate at the time and feels tired whenever it's rehashed now.
More broadly, this is when the wheels started turning. Penrith were no longer the plucky young fellas from the west on the rise, they were an NRL superpower who committed the worst sin any team who isn't your own ever can — they won a lot of games and they won them in brutal, hard-nosed style.
After this game, it felt like it was the Panthers against the world, which must have been fine with Penrith because judging from what's happened in the years since, the world didn't have much of a chance.
The 2021 preliminary final was Penrith's finest hour. (Getty: Bradley Kanaris)
Four years is a long time and plenty of faces have come in and out of the Panthers side over their period of dominance but the core ingredients of their success have remained the same.
There might be some slight difference but the base elements are always there — athletic ball-carriers in the back five, a forward pack which is powerful and athletic and mean as sin, Nathan Cleary's metronomic kicking game and a defensive approach defined by hitting everything that moves until it stops moving or scrambling like your life depends on it.
With a healthy State of Origin representation putting a heavy strain on their best players and their attacking flair deserting them at the worst possible time, those core tenants were all Penrith had left heading into the 2021 finals series.
The Storm's rampaging season had them firmly positioned as title favourites, South Sydney's shock win over the Panthers in week one of the finals had them not too far behind and there was nothing for Penrith to do but dig as far down as they could into the very limits of their desperation.
The attack didn't come back. They scored a combined 42 points in their four finals games but it didn't matter. There was no problem Penrith could not solve by grinding it out, kicking it into the corners and tackling it as hard as they could over and over and over again.
"Defence like that, it's special to be a part of. So much hard work and commitment goes into it and we work to keep each other accountable," said backrower Scott Sorensen
"It might look fancy and great and people might say we're unbelievable and suffocating or use all those terms, but it's all hard work and belief."
Their 10-6 preliminary final win over a heavily favoured Storm team, who had won 21 of their last 22 matches and scored the second-most points across the season of any team in Australian rugby league history, remains Penrith's finest hour, the game where they took all the lessons they had learned up to that point and applied them to their particular brand of rugby league brutalism.
Through moments big — like Cleary's kick for Crichton's opening try — and small — like Scott Sorensen's mighty chase on Melbourne halfback Jahrome Hughes just before half-time – the Panthers achieved total realisation of everything they were and are as a football team and a revelation of the true steel they carried within themselves.
Even counting the grand finals, this is the one game that best sums up what has made Penrith great and of the 87 matches they've won since the start of 2020, it is clearly the crown jewel.
Penrith have never reached true perfection but they've come close plenty of times. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe )
While their 2021 premiership was a mighty feat of human endeavour, Penrith's title defence was a lot more straightforward.
They were the best team all season and nobody really expected anybody to give them much trouble en route to another premiership. For the most part, the Panthers machine was running at full capacity all year and whenever it did hit top gear the results were what, by then, we had come to expect from the Panthers.
There have been plenty of clubs, even the successful ones, for whom the quest to improve stops once the first premiership trophy is in the cabinet but all those cliches you hear about working hard and accountability and always trying to get better are more powerful when Panthers players say them because they are so clearly true.
For some people, they're just words but for Penrith, it's become a lifestyle.
"We truly believe we can always get better … recognising that we're never going to be perfect but we can always try to be," Cleary said.
"Rugby league isn't a perfect game and people aren't perfect either, there's always going to be mistakes, there's always going to be things you do well one week that you don't do as well the next week. That's what I like about it.
"When it all works it's pretty fun. You don't have to think about it. You just move forward, even if it's not great and it's not always going to be great. You don't sit back and admire it, you just keep going."
Perfection in rugby league doesn't exist but what Penrith put together to open the 2021 finals was pretty close. Hosting a Parramatta side who'd beaten them twice during the season, the Panthers knocked it up another notch in a 27-8 rout.
Everything was running in clockwork fashion, from Cleary's kicking game to the link play of the forwards to the back line moves. Parramatta, a brave and talented side, were blown away by the force of a Panthers side operating at peak capacity.
This game is emblematic of so many Panther wins where their methodical dedication to the process and their ability to find the joy in the work simply suffocated a side who could go with them for a set, or a few minutes or maybe even a half, but who would eventually crack. Penrith repeated the dose three weeks later in the grand final to claim back-to-back titles.
Penrith got it done without any of their Origin contingent when they played the Knights earlier this year.(Getty Images: Jason McCawley)
Penrith's ride didn't start so smoothly this season. They dropped four of their first eight matches and while there were never any real fears about things working out, it was a window into the final pillar of Penrith's dynasty — adaptability.
"Earlier this year I thought we were trying to do what we did last year but it wasn't working to the same effect," Cleary said.
"We worked out what we wanted to play like, we worked out our identity and we trusted that. Trust is a big part of what we do.
"Each year is different, but once we find the way we want to play we know we'll be in every game."
While the core of Penrith's strengths have remained the same for four seasons, the ravages of time and the salary cap mean there's always new faces coming in and old ones leaving.
Moulding new talent to the system and moulding the system to new talent is a delicate art but it's another one Penrith have mastered, one which came through the most in Cleary's surprise pick for their most important performance of the season — a game where neither he nor any of Penrith's Origin stars took the field.
"The Knights game at home was a great one. We had all our Origin players out and they had pretty much a full-strength team and we were able to win, I thought that was a good reflection of our culture and our next-man-up mentality," Cleary said.
"People might have said that was just another win but within our club, we were very, very happy with that."
The 20-12 victory was a sure sign there is still no end in sight for Penrith as an NRL powerhouse —only three of the 17 who took the field that night earlier this year played for the club in the 2020 grand final.
This is not supposed to happen. Success is not meant to last this long or stay this strong and yet, for the Panthers, it has.
One day, what's going on at Penrith will end. Nothing lasts forever in rugby league and Brisbane's run to the grand final is proof of just how quickly new powers can rise.
But Penrith's ability to reload and refresh, to never get sick of all the little things that make up life at the top of the mountain and their gift for imparting those things to new players old and young, is why they're in with a shot at winning a third-straight premiership and why, by just about any measurement, they're one of the most dominant teams in Australian rugby league history.
Ivan Cleary and his charges have built an incredible winning machine, one of the very best in NRL history, and sit on the verge of rugby league immortality as they chase a third-straight premiership this weekend when they face Brisbane.
So with the Panthers chasing their place in forever, these are the five games that sum up their rise from the foot of the mountains to the stars.
They might have had bigger wins, and better ones, but these five are the most important. The only rule was no grand finals — because that's just too easy.
Round 6, 2020 — Panthers 21 def Storm 14
In early 2020, Penrith's greatness was still coming into view. (Getty Images: Ryan Pierse)
Nobody really sees a juggernaut coming until it's already too late. If it was easy to see all the pieces moving into place, everybody would build one.
Six weeks into the 2020 season, Penrith were still getting their act together – Nathan Cleary spent some time on the sideline due to suspension, Caleb Aekins was filling in for an injured Dylan Edwards at fullback and Isaah Yeo and James Fisher-Harris both spent a game or two at second row rather than in the middle.
The Panthers had all the pieces but nobody, not even the club themselves, could have realised how well all those pieces would fit together.
This match against the Storm, which was played behind closed doors at Campbelltown Stadium, was the first time the Panthers as we know them today came into view. Going back now, it's like seeing a band do a demo of a song that's since become a hit.
The spine of Edwards, Jarome Luai, Nathan Cleary and Api Koroisau played together for the first time. Fisher-Harris and Yeo are together in the middle. Everything is where it's supposed to be.
None of them are the forces of nature they would soon become, but they're in the right place. They were aimed and it was time to fire.
Back then, any Penrith win over the Storm was a big deal, and at the time it was something of an announcement there might be something going on out at Penrith. There was something going on alright, and it's been going on ever since.
Round 5, 2021 – Panthers 30 def Raiders 10
The Panthers have refused to compromise their hard-nosed style. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)
People may enjoy the rise of a team but after they have risen high enough for long enough, those same people start waiting for the fall and the longer they have to wait, the more desperately and fervently they crave it.
After that win over Melbourne in early 2020, the Panthers lost one game in the next 11 months – it just happened to be the biggest game of all. The grand final loss to the Storm was the kind of defeat that could have derailed Penrith permanently but they stayed right on the job, winning their opening four matches of the following season.
Then they faced the Raiders who, at the time, were a competition heavyweight on the back of a rugged, physical, confrontational style. Penrith, to put it bluntly, beat the Raiders down in a 30-10 victory filled with spite, niggle and ill-feeling from both sides.
They were the same team before they belted the Raiders as they were after. But the way they were talked about and considered was never the same again.
This is the game where Penrith's bulletproof confidence and brash, youthful style — the very same style that helped them take the competition by storm the year before — was rebranded as arrogance, a trope which was inaccurate at the time and feels tired whenever it's rehashed now.
More broadly, this is when the wheels started turning. Penrith were no longer the plucky young fellas from the west on the rise, they were an NRL superpower who committed the worst sin any team who isn't your own ever can — they won a lot of games and they won them in brutal, hard-nosed style.
After this game, it felt like it was the Panthers against the world, which must have been fine with Penrith because judging from what's happened in the years since, the world didn't have much of a chance.
Preliminary final, 2021 – Panthers 10 def Storm 6
The 2021 preliminary final was Penrith's finest hour. (Getty: Bradley Kanaris)
Four years is a long time and plenty of faces have come in and out of the Panthers side over their period of dominance but the core ingredients of their success have remained the same.
There might be some slight difference but the base elements are always there — athletic ball-carriers in the back five, a forward pack which is powerful and athletic and mean as sin, Nathan Cleary's metronomic kicking game and a defensive approach defined by hitting everything that moves until it stops moving or scrambling like your life depends on it.
With a healthy State of Origin representation putting a heavy strain on their best players and their attacking flair deserting them at the worst possible time, those core tenants were all Penrith had left heading into the 2021 finals series.
The Storm's rampaging season had them firmly positioned as title favourites, South Sydney's shock win over the Panthers in week one of the finals had them not too far behind and there was nothing for Penrith to do but dig as far down as they could into the very limits of their desperation.
The attack didn't come back. They scored a combined 42 points in their four finals games but it didn't matter. There was no problem Penrith could not solve by grinding it out, kicking it into the corners and tackling it as hard as they could over and over and over again.
"Defence like that, it's special to be a part of. So much hard work and commitment goes into it and we work to keep each other accountable," said backrower Scott Sorensen
"It might look fancy and great and people might say we're unbelievable and suffocating or use all those terms, but it's all hard work and belief."
Their 10-6 preliminary final win over a heavily favoured Storm team, who had won 21 of their last 22 matches and scored the second-most points across the season of any team in Australian rugby league history, remains Penrith's finest hour, the game where they took all the lessons they had learned up to that point and applied them to their particular brand of rugby league brutalism.
Through moments big — like Cleary's kick for Crichton's opening try — and small — like Scott Sorensen's mighty chase on Melbourne halfback Jahrome Hughes just before half-time – the Panthers achieved total realisation of everything they were and are as a football team and a revelation of the true steel they carried within themselves.
Even counting the grand finals, this is the one game that best sums up what has made Penrith great and of the 87 matches they've won since the start of 2020, it is clearly the crown jewel.
Qualifying final, 2022 – Panthers 27 def Eels 8
Penrith have never reached true perfection but they've come close plenty of times. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe )
While their 2021 premiership was a mighty feat of human endeavour, Penrith's title defence was a lot more straightforward.
They were the best team all season and nobody really expected anybody to give them much trouble en route to another premiership. For the most part, the Panthers machine was running at full capacity all year and whenever it did hit top gear the results were what, by then, we had come to expect from the Panthers.
There have been plenty of clubs, even the successful ones, for whom the quest to improve stops once the first premiership trophy is in the cabinet but all those cliches you hear about working hard and accountability and always trying to get better are more powerful when Panthers players say them because they are so clearly true.
For some people, they're just words but for Penrith, it's become a lifestyle.
"We truly believe we can always get better … recognising that we're never going to be perfect but we can always try to be," Cleary said.
"Rugby league isn't a perfect game and people aren't perfect either, there's always going to be mistakes, there's always going to be things you do well one week that you don't do as well the next week. That's what I like about it.
"When it all works it's pretty fun. You don't have to think about it. You just move forward, even if it's not great and it's not always going to be great. You don't sit back and admire it, you just keep going."
Perfection in rugby league doesn't exist but what Penrith put together to open the 2021 finals was pretty close. Hosting a Parramatta side who'd beaten them twice during the season, the Panthers knocked it up another notch in a 27-8 rout.
Everything was running in clockwork fashion, from Cleary's kicking game to the link play of the forwards to the back line moves. Parramatta, a brave and talented side, were blown away by the force of a Panthers side operating at peak capacity.
This game is emblematic of so many Panther wins where their methodical dedication to the process and their ability to find the joy in the work simply suffocated a side who could go with them for a set, or a few minutes or maybe even a half, but who would eventually crack. Penrith repeated the dose three weeks later in the grand final to claim back-to-back titles.
Round 17, 2023 – Panthers 20 def Knights 12
Penrith got it done without any of their Origin contingent when they played the Knights earlier this year.(Getty Images: Jason McCawley)
Penrith's ride didn't start so smoothly this season. They dropped four of their first eight matches and while there were never any real fears about things working out, it was a window into the final pillar of Penrith's dynasty — adaptability.
"Earlier this year I thought we were trying to do what we did last year but it wasn't working to the same effect," Cleary said.
"We worked out what we wanted to play like, we worked out our identity and we trusted that. Trust is a big part of what we do.
"Each year is different, but once we find the way we want to play we know we'll be in every game."
While the core of Penrith's strengths have remained the same for four seasons, the ravages of time and the salary cap mean there's always new faces coming in and old ones leaving.
Moulding new talent to the system and moulding the system to new talent is a delicate art but it's another one Penrith have mastered, one which came through the most in Cleary's surprise pick for their most important performance of the season — a game where neither he nor any of Penrith's Origin stars took the field.
"The Knights game at home was a great one. We had all our Origin players out and they had pretty much a full-strength team and we were able to win, I thought that was a good reflection of our culture and our next-man-up mentality," Cleary said.
"People might have said that was just another win but within our club, we were very, very happy with that."
The 20-12 victory was a sure sign there is still no end in sight for Penrith as an NRL powerhouse —only three of the 17 who took the field that night earlier this year played for the club in the 2020 grand final.
This is not supposed to happen. Success is not meant to last this long or stay this strong and yet, for the Panthers, it has.
One day, what's going on at Penrith will end. Nothing lasts forever in rugby league and Brisbane's run to the grand final is proof of just how quickly new powers can rise.
But Penrith's ability to reload and refresh, to never get sick of all the little things that make up life at the top of the mountain and their gift for imparting those things to new players old and young, is why they're in with a shot at winning a third-straight premiership and why, by just about any measurement, they're one of the most dominant teams in Australian rugby league history.
