All good things must come to an end, and even great things too.
Penrith enter 2025 aiming for a fifth straight NRL premiership but they have never been more vulnerable after two key departures in the off-season.
Due to a combination of the salary cap restraints and one of their star players wanting to return to New Zealand, the Panthers have lost their heart and soul of their team.
Front-rower James Fisher-Harris is arguably the toughest loss that Penrith will have to overcome in the procession of high-profile guns who have left the club in the past four years as they have piled up title after title after title and title.
And the player who is arguably the only bigger loss than Fisher-Harris is the other big name who has departed in the off-season, Jarome Luai.
The Samoan international is coming off a career-best season after he stepped up big time when Nathan Cleary was out injured to take on the role of chief playmaker, silencing the critics who claimed he was just a secondary playmaker who rode on the coattails of his childhood chum.
Luai was given a decent offer to stay by Penrith, but money talks and Luai walked to Concord where a more lucrative and longer-term deal was on offer from the Wests Tigers with the added luxury of a couple of get-out clauses in the deal which give him the freedom to pull on the ripcord and get out of dysfunctional TigerTown if the joint-venture club’s perennial infighting and factionalism make Benji Marshall’s rebuilding mission an impossible one.
For the Panthers, they have offset the loss of Fisher-Harris and Luai by adding Parramatta rising star Blaize Talagi and Kiwi veteran Isaiah Papali’i from the Tigers but even though one is a rising star and the other is a very dependable forward they do not have the gravitas that Fisher-Harris and Luai have brought to the table over the past five years of successive grand final appearances and four trophies to stack the cabinet.
The magic in Ivan Cleary’s coaching job since they first tasted premiership success in 2021 has been keeping the hunger in his squad.
These Panthers have never played like pampered, well-fed pussycats since claiming their first title and after blitzing the Eels in their first premiership defence, they scrapped and clawed their way to victories over Brisbane in 2023 and the Storm last year in matches that went right down to the wire.
In the Broncos’ case, Penrith were dead and buried until Nathan Cleary engineered a comeback that Lazarus would have been proud of – both the mythological version and the former Storm captain whose team previously held the record for the biggest comeback in a grand final in the 1999 decider.
Nathan Cleary and star fullback Dylan Edwards have undergone off-season surgery to correct their shoulder and knee problems while Isaah Yeo has been resting his feet after earning the Golden Boot last season when he led the Kangaroos to their Pacific Championships victory over Tonga.
While those three are on the field, the Panthers are always a chance of winning the title.
Throw in Brian To’o on the wing, the best in the business, and second-rower Liam Martin on the right edge and the Panthers have a team capable of going all the way.
But the question marks will be whether the likes of Moses Leota, Lindsay Smith, Papali’i and Liam Henry can maintain Penrith’s dominance in the central third, which allows Yeo to link with Cleary to give him that extra second or two of time which he uses to maximum advantage to put opposition defensive lines on the back foot and his own outside backs speeding towards the try line.
Talagi is undoubtedly an immense talent but he is 19 and has just 20 NRL appearances under his belt, albeit he scored 11 tries in those matches as he was chopped and changed between centre, five-eighth, the bench, fullback and wing.
Penrith have brought him in on the promise of making him Cleary’s halves partner and he won’t get a better opportunity than running outside Cleary with Yeo also shouldering plenty of the playmaking responsibilities.
Are the Panthers prepared to take a step backwards and absorb short-term pain in getting Talagi up to speed in this pivotal role, which could jeopardise their chances of securing a fifth straight premiership.
They have a specialist five-eighth in Jack Cole and a reliable playmaker in Brad Schneider also on the books but Talagi is the player they want to make the No.6 jersey his own.
Talagi was selected in the 2022 Australian Schoolboys side alongside the likes of Dolphins halfback Isaiya Katoa (back when he was a Panthers cub), Gold Coast speedster Keano Kini (before he became a Kiwi international) and Raiders fullback Chevy Stewart.
He has the credentials but he has no big-game experience at NRL level, which could be an issue later in the season.
Perhaps surprisingly, the Storm are the bookmakers’ favourites to win the 2025 title due to their stability in their roster.
Craig Bellamy welcomes back everyone who was on the park at Accor Stadium last October for the 14-6 defeat to the Panthers but crucially he has added Wests Tigers prop Stefano Utoikamanu.
The one time NSW Origin prop on his own will not be the difference but his arrival gives the Storm some much needed size up front to complement the likes of Tui Kamakamica and Nelson Asafa-Solomona, who was banned from the grand final due to his high tackle charge.
His absence meant the Storm went into their biggest game of the year without their biggest player.
At the start of Penrith’s grand final run in 2020 they were the young team on the rise who were given a dose of reality on grand final night when Cameron Smith led his team of Storm veterans to victory via a first-half blitz.
