It certainly felt like the end.

Like this champion team, once an impenetrable fortress, was on its last legs.

FOX LEAGUE, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every game of every round in the 2025 NRL Telstra Premiership, LIVE with no ad-breaks during play. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.

It certainly looked like the end.

The way Fletcher Sharpe ran past five Panthers defenders to muscle his way over in the fourth minute, or the way Dylan Lucas carved up Penrith’s right edge for a first-half hat-trick that was almost four tries, if not for a last-ditch swipe at his arm from fullback Daine Laurie.

And it certainly sounded like the end.

The way Ivan Cleary admitted the Panthers had shown the potential “to be doing much better” but could “only rely on potential for so long”.

As for the solution?

“Win games,” a blunt Cleary said at the time.

“It’s not where you want to be, but it’s like what is more important at the moment is how far you are away from everyone else.”

And the Panthers were far away. Further away than they had ever been at that point of the season since 2007. They finished with the wooden spoon that year.

Cleary had been there before in 2019, when Penrith was anchored to the bottom of the ladder with two wins through 10 rounds after a 30-10 defeat to the Warriors.

He was lost for answers at time, but eventually found them as the Panthers finished the season with a 9-5 record to fall just short of the top eight.

But this was different. Expectations were higher, the stakes greater. He understood it too.

So, in the wake of that 25-6 loss to the Knights in Bathurst, the usually poised Panthers coach picked his moment to lay down a challenge to his playing group.

Exactly what was said, word for word, is only known by those inside the sheds at Carrington Park, but foxsports.com.au understands that — in essence — Cleary questioned whether his players actually had it in them to contend for a fifth title in a row.

Izack Tago wouldn’t go as far as to call it a spray.

“But he definitely was pretty angry,” the Panthers centre said on Tuesday afternoon.

“He wasn’t happy with the performance and a lot of the boys weren’t either. We were pretty deflated.”

It isn’t like he had to say much either. The players already knew it. But he “set the tone” according to Penrith’s other centre, Casey McLean.

“He kind of said we’ve been a lot better,” the 19-year-old added.

“I feel like he kind of got his point across and it was pretty much player-driven from there on.”

Specifically, it was driven by hooker Mitch Kenny, an unsung hero of the group who may not be the flashiest of players but more than makes up for it with his tireless work ethic and vocal leadership, which was desperately needed in the sheds on that Bathurst night with the team’s Origin stars away in Blues camp.

“Kenny kind of set the tone for all of us,” McLean said.

“He’s the one that said, ‘We’re a lot better (than this), we need to lift our standards’.”

“Mitch has been someone who has been here from the start of the success and a bit before when the club wasn’t going so well,” added Tago.

“He’s sort of been through the highs and the lows of the club and seen what’s changed to make us a better team and he was one of the leaders, especially during the Origin period.”

Blues fullback Dylan Edwards was one of the Panthers players who missed that Knights loss and the post-game address from Cleary, along with what Kenny said.

But when he returned to Penrith from Origin duty he could immediately sense a change in the playing group.

“Just the intensity which everyone was training at and the accountability that everyone sort of had coming back from Origin and coming back from training,” Edwards said.

“There was definitely a noticeable change.”

Isaah Yeo saw it too.

“I feel like there’s been a bit of a change since the Newcastle game in Bathurst… there was a real flick (of the switch), particularly in the intensity at training,” he said.

McLean, who is playing his first full year of NRL at the club, also singled out the same thing.

“Ever since (the Bathurst game), the intensity at training through drills, even just around the change room they’ve kind of gone through the roof back to where they used to be,” he said.

“I think that’s kind of showcasing why we’re all playing so well.”

Previously, Penrith had never been short of motivation.

The theme of their first premiership in 2021 was ‘Everest’. They climbed that, so the following year it was ‘Top Gun’ as they looked to defend their title. Then it was ‘Hunting History’ and in 2024, it was all about ‘Legacy’.

As for 2025, well that is yet to come out. Maybe it never will. After all, the theme has only been made public after the Panthers won the grand final each year, spelled out on the walls as the dressing rooms were opened to journalists for the first time.

But if there is a fifth? Well, the theme is always settled on in the pre-season so there is no way Cleary and the coaching staff could have foreseen such a poor start to their title defence.

But if they did it feels like ‘Inevitable’ would be fitting, because if the Panthers go all the way after sitting last in Round 12, there is no better word to describe this champion team.

That night in Bathurst was the closest it felt to this historic run coming to an end. Even closer than the Broncos would have felt in those 22 minutes between Ezra Mam scoring his third try and Cleary stepping back on his right foot to enter rugby league folklore.

But this Panthers team is inevitable. Cleary, as he proved in that 2023 grand final, is inevitable.

Now, Penrith could become the first side in rugby league’s 118-year history to win a finals game, let alone potentially a premiership, after languishing in last at the end of Round 12.

So, how exactly have the Panthers gone from being one of the worst teams in the competition to a genuine premiership contender in the space of just a few months?

THE FRESH FACES WHO BUILT ‘TRUST’ AND FOUND THEIR FEET

Well, while losing players is nothing new for this Penrith team during its four-year run, there is something to be said about the fact the Panthers have largely played this season with an entirely new-look left edge.

The departures of Sunia Turuva and Jarome Luai left Penrith needing to find a new winger and five-eighth and to start the season that was McLean and Jack Cole.

Paul Alamoti was also a mainstay in the Penrith backline while Tom Jenkins, who first joined the Panthers’ junior system as a 19-year-old before struggling to get playing time in the NRL, also entered the calculations from the Round 3 game against the Storm.

All of this is to say the Panthers took a while to settle on their first-choice backline, which now features McLean and Jenkins with Blaize Talagi at five-eighth.

The constant chopping and changing, which was often forced, along with the relative inexperience of Penrith’s eventual long-term left edge resulted in set plays where the timing was off while communication in defence was also lacking. Trust also had to be earned.

“I think that our trust for one another has come a long way,” McLean said.

“Kind of understanding how each other moves… (we’ve) gotten a lot better.”

There were moments earlier in the season where that wasn’t happening.

As bad as that loss to the Knights in Bathurst was, the 30-12 defeat to the Dolphins at Suncorp also comes to mind, where the Panthers let in three tries from inside their own half.

The attack was equally poor, with both their tries coming off kicks — and one was comically from the boot of Dolphins winger Jack Bostock.

Premiership-winning halfback Cooper Cronk nailed it in commentary at the time when he was asked just what had happened to Penrith’s attack, which had suddenly become stale and predictable.

“The only way to explain Penrith’s attack is they’re probably running the same system they had for four or five years but there’s been multiple changes… and the people who have come in aren’t as effective at running the same roles as those players,” Cronk said during the game.

“They’re just off by a metre, the pass is just off by a fraction and it results in some poor football. It’s been slow. It’s been one-paced.”

The opposite was true on the weekend against the Tigers, and perhaps best illustrated in the Jenkins try where Cleary shaped to pass twice, toying with the defence before delivering a centimetre-perfect ball to Talagi who delivered a pinpoint, no-look pass for his winger to fly over in the corner.

The set plays are similar to the ones they were running earlier in the year, but with a key difference.

“Their play-the-ball speed is quicker and their passes are centimetre-perfect every time,” Cronk said on ‘Matty & Cronk’.

“The fact that it is predictable, teams can still not stop it.

“When Cody Walker and Alex Johnston were carving up, I could have told you exactly what was happening in their play. Two across the field, one-out runners coming back for Cody and Alex Johnston still scored five tries.

“It is not what you do. It’s how you do things.”

And at the moment, as Matty Johns put it, “everyone is in their right spots”.

“Suddenly, their attack is really synchronised again.”

Looking specifically at the development of Penrith’s three new faces on the left edge, McLean in particular has come a long way since the start of the season when he was struggling to draw and pass, while the increased physicality of defending in the NRL was also a challenge.

He was dropped from the NRL side after the Round 8 loss to Manly in what the 19-year-old described as a much-needed “reset”.

“I think I was kind of too overwhelmed with what was happening and stuff… it kind of let me create my own path and just go the way that I wanted to go,” McLean said.

That included a standout game against the Bulldogs and former Panther Stephen Crichton, who was expected to teach his much younger opposite number a lesson but was instead kept quiet in a 8-6 Penrith win.

“I knew it was going to be a tough challenge going against Critta,” McLean said.

“He’s kind of set a basis for all centres around the league… he’s obviously in the position he is in for a reason.

“So I just wanted to live up to that expectation, holding a good matchup against him, which I think I’ve done, but honestly there’s still a lot more to grow in my game.”

That game showed just how far McLean and Jenkins had come as a defensive combination, perfectly picking their moments to jam in and wrap up Crichton.

There weren’t moments where one came in and the other stayed back. The trust, as McLean said earlier, was there.

Jenkins, meanwhile, has been a revelation after managing just six games in his two years with Penrith’s NRL squad between 2022 and 2023.

That prompted the versatile outside back to look elsewhere, landing at Newcastle where he played only five games before returning home to emerge as a key piece of Penrith’s backline.

While Turuva and Brian To’o always pumped out the metres for the Panthers, they sorely lacked a true aerial threat and were often targeted by opposition teams accordingly.

But now in Jenkins, Penrith has its own target for Cleary. A well-kept secret in some regards.

“He always has been (great in the air),” Tago said.

“I just think when he was here last time he didn’t play a lot of NRL so everyone else didn’t see it but we knew it and now that he’s back we’re starting to find him a lot more often and he’s a dangerous threat there.”

As for Talagi, he only got his first start in the 30-12 loss to the Dolphins and in some ways is in a similar situation to the one Cleary found himself in his early years at Penrith.

Of course, Cleary isn’t in the final years of his career like James Maloney was, but the challenge for Talagi has been not just picking his moments to chime in but even commanding the ball at times while playing next to the league’s best halfback.

Panthers great Mark Geyer said back in 2020 that Cleary at times “showed too much respect” to Maloney and while Talagi won’t be moving out of his halves partner’s shadow any time soon, he has grown in confidence as the season has progressed.

That has been evident in the way he is engaging the line more and throwing passes like the no-look one that put Jenkins over against the Tigers last week.

Although coach Cleary told reporters earlier in the year that one thing he noticed in the 20-year-old when recruiting him was that he was “not afraid of the moment”.

“I knew it was a real growing season for him and so much (room) to grow in the years to come, which is exciting,” Cleary said at the time.

“He definitely puts himself out there. He’s not afraid of the moment. He’s a tough kid and he’s really happy and willing to learn.

“He knows he’s not going to get it all right, it doesn’t worry him. We obviously saw a lot in him and thought he could do well in our system.”

While there was a point in time when it made sense for Penrith to move on from Maloney and let Cleary take over, this is obviously far removed from that situation.

Plus, Cronk said he can even see the impact of Cleary’s mentorship in the way Talagi’s ball-playing and running game has evolved this season.

“He’s doing things that I can see in his performances have been coached by Nathan,” Cronk said.

So, the development of Penrith’s younger and more inexperienced players has certainly coincided with its recent run of form. But what else has changed on a broader scale?

‘WASN’T HAPPENING 12 WEEKS AGO’: A TRANSFORMATION IN NUMBERS

After that 36-2 loss to the Panthers last week, Benji Marshall admitted the Tigers were taught a lesson.

“On game management, field position and kicking,” he added.

“The thing with Penrith is they don’t beat themselves.”

Which was true on Saturday night. The Panthers completed 37 of their 42 sets and only conceded two penalties. But earlier in the year it was a different story.

Take the 28-18 loss to the Rabbitohs, which saw the defending premiers fall behind 28-0 at halftime. They completed at just 50 per cent in the first half and conceded five penalties.

After that Round 12 loss to the Knights, Penrith’s 78.6 per cent completion rate ranked 11th-worst in the league and their 11.1 errors per game were the 14th most.

They were only conceding 5.7 penalties, which was the seventh-best mark in the league, but the bigger issue was the area Penrith was giving them up in.

Far too often, the Panthers were gifting the opposition cheap field position either in the form of yardage penalties or errors deep inside their own half.

It continually tested a defensive line which, with new combinations, was just not capable of absorbing the same kind of pressure as Penrith’s premiership-winning teams of the past.

Eighteen of Penrith’s 46 tries conceded up until that point came directly off penalties, which ranked tied third-worst in the league along with Parramatta.

Now, while the cheap errors and penalties were causing all kinds of problems, it is not as if discipline hadn’t been an issue for previous Panthers teams.

The ball-handling has been largely perfect, with Penrith ranking first or second in completion rate in three of its four premiership-winning seasons.

But they conceded on average the fourth-most penalties last year and the eighth-most in 2022.

Opposition teams were enjoying the same sort of field position, they just weren’t as efficient in converting those opportunities into tries.

That, of course, points to those new edge combinations being a work in progress but in reality, Penrith’s split of tries up until Round 12 was split pretty evenly across the board with 20 on the left and 19 on the right.

So that seems to suggest that the level of effort and scramble that was previously the cornerstone of the Panthers’ success had taken a serious dip.

Defence is about attitude and maybe playing away from their home at Penrith and at Commbank Stadium, where crowd numbers were down and the atmosphere was nowhere near as daunting as it was at a sold-out BlueBet stadium, was a factor.

After all, Penrith’s recent run of form has coincided with grudge games against its three Western Sydney rivals.

Whatever the reason may be, the defensive turnaround has allowed the Panthers to get back into the grinding style of football that won them four-straight premierships.

The Tigers were the latest victim of it, with Marshall telling reporters in his post-game press conference that his team were “strangled to death”.

“They were outstanding,” he said.

“They just kept putting pressure on us, hence why they’ve won four competitions in a row.”

But earlier in the year when they were falling behind quickly like they did against the Knights, Rabbitohs and Dolphins, it forced the Panthers to go away from what worked. The fact they went from throwing the most general passes in play between Rounds 1 and 12 (125.2) to throwing the eighth-most (107) proves it.

They started chasing points, abandoning the far more simple and direct approach that had won them so many games in the first place.

And one thing that has perhaps been underrated in their run since 2020 is the fact the Panthers have done it without the top-end speed that some of the league’s other best attacking teams have.

There is no Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, Kaeo Weekes or Alofiana Khan-Pereira. No easy button to press when they needed to chase points.

It didn’t necessarily matter when the Panthers were ahead but those moments were few and far between in the opening half of the 2025 season.

Now the Panthers are generating their own speed. Not with pure pace out wide but at the play-the-ball, rolling up the field and scoring tries like the one McLean did against the Tigers.

“That play-the-ball speed wasn’t happening 12 weeks ago,” Cronk said.

THE SAME INGREDIENTS ARE THERE… BUT IS THERE ENOUGH GAS IN THE TANK?

Of course, as much as plenty has changed for the Panthers in the two months since that loss in Bathurst, there are other things that have stayed the same.

Like Dylan Edwards consistently bouncing off tackles. Fifteen times it was in the win over the Rabbitohs. You can add seven more in against the Tigers, along with 273 run metres.

Edwards battled his way through a groin injury earlier in the year but now, over four months removed from the worst of it, Cronk said Penrith’s fullback “looks fitter” and is moving “so much better” than he was in the first half of the season.

“When you’re a gun halfback, if you know what you’re going to get from your fullback it makes your job so much easier,” the premiership-winning halfback added.

It also makes your job so much easier when you have a lock forward who is more like a third playmaker in the red zone.

That is the gravitational pull that comes with the subtle ball-playing of Isaah Yeo. The way he manipulates the defensive line with just one flick of a wrist, opening up the space and time for Cleary to do the rest.

And going back to Edwards, he isn’t the only one in Penrith’s back five pumping out the metres every week. Brian To’o is obviously a tackle-busting machine but Jenkins, McLean and Izack Tago all topped 100 metres in last week’s win over the Tigers as well.

It is like a fighter and their jab. They won’t get the finish right away but throw enough, bend the line enough times, drag enough defenders with you, and the opposition will eventually wear down.

Mix in the occasional left hook or straight hand upstairs in the form of a charging run from Luron Patea off the bench and suddenly you’re just 30 metres out, and then the knockout punch comes in the form of a perfectly-timed kick like the one Cleary delivered for Tago on Saturday night.

It is the beauty of playing behind such a well-oiled machine like the one Ivan Cleary is running at Penrith. Cronk had a similar experience at Melbourne playing with Cameron Smith.

“I was the same,” the four-time premiership-winning halfback said.

“I didn’t really have to worry about plays one to three because I knew it was under control with Cameron. He would take us to the field position. He could do whatever he wants to get there, and I could start looking at the outside defence… so I had an idea what my kick option was going to be, and then when I get the ball, I’m in the best spot for the backrower or Billy to be around.

“So there’s a freedom in allowing people to do their job and when they do it at the highest level like Dylan Edwards, as a halfback it helps.”

Whether it, along with the development of new faces like Talagi, Jenkins and McLean, will be enough to see Penrith win a fifth-straight premiership remains to be seen.

The fact the Panthers are in such a strong position to contend for another title despite not having the same points buffer during the Origin period is incredible in itself.

Yeo admitted earlier in the month that it was “ridiculous” that the Panthers suddenly found themselves on the edge of the top four given where they started.

“It’s hard to say you were confident and still believed somewhat you could achieve (it) through the season when you’re sitting in last place, but I still felt like we had that in us,” he said.

“I felt like we were having to learn things on the run that we hadn’t had to learn over previous seasons. Whether that was being down on confidence or new boys coming into the system, it was always going to take time — which it does every season.”

Edwards, meanwhile, said the “adversity” the team went through would only help the club’s younger players like McLean and Talagi in what will “hopefully be really long careers”.

“They learned some tough lessons early,” the Panthers fullback said.

“They sort of had to ride that wave and come out the other side, and they’re still learning but they’re playing really good footy at the moment and working hard towards it.”

The question, of course, is whether the Panthers will have it in them for one final push come September, with Cronk admitting the “energy tank could be zapped at any stage”.

But if they do, considering the way they started and the position coach Cleary found himself in after that Knights game, Johns went as far as to say it may be his “crowning glory”.