Penrith dynasty hands Warriors a blueprint
PLUS: A cheating hailstorm hits 'minor' sports, while NZ has a great weekend in the world of fast cars and golf (and a bit of other stuff too).
The jeweller hadn’t started inscribing Penrith Panthers onto the Provan-Summons Trophy last night before pundits were debating where this team stands alongside other great league dynasties.
It was a fair enough discussion point because Penrith had long since crushed any Parramatta hopes by battering their way to a 28-0 lead before allowing a couple of consolation tries in the dying minutes.
Dynasties are not a straightforward topic. For many New Zealanders, our love affair with Australian league didn’t start until the 1980s, when you could get the Winfield Cup matches and highlights a week or two late at video shops. Those were the days of the Parramatta and Canterbury-Bankstown dynasties, with Manly-Warringah nipping at their heels.
Before then, there were numerous South Sydney eras of dominance and St George’s ridiculous 11-in-a-row run from 1956 to 1966. Even Balmain had a dynasty, albeit in the 1910s, and the Green Machine of Canberra was feared in the late-’80s and early-’90s.
Because we’re hardwired towards recency bias, we tend to look at the pre-NRL days as a lesser product, and it probably was in many respects - particularly TV coverage. If we look at post the Super League-ARL war (from 1998) as offering comparable value, then the dynasties are:
Brisbane Broncos - 1998, 2000, 2006; GF 2015
Manly - 2008, 2011; GF 2007, 2013
Melbourne Storm - 2007*, 2009*, 2012, 2017, 2020; GF 2006*, 2008*, 2016, 2018
Sydney Roosters - 2002, 2013, 2018, 2019; GF 2003, 2004, 2010
Penrith Panthers - 2003, 2021, 2022; GF 2020
It’s tricky. Brisbane was the ultimate one-club town for a while and capitalised on that with a super-professional system. They won the Super League season in 1997, but for these purposes it doesn’t count and they haven’t won for a long time.
Brisbane at least felt like a dynasty, even if they’ve flattered to deceive, whereas Manly never felt like one, even though the period from ’07 to 2013 is impressive.
Melbourne have made the most grand finals since the NRL merger but they blatantly cheated and were caught. Essentially everything they did from 2006 to 2009 was illegitimate, which included four grand finals*. Still, they remain a force.
From salary-cap cheats to salary-cap “masters”, the Roosters have the most legitimate premierships and grand final appearances, so it’d be fair to describe them still as the gold standard.
Penrith are, however, the NRL’s most powerful club at present. They won everything they entered this year, including age-group and reserve-grade competitions.
They are a model club in other respects too, engaging deeply with their extended community, which includes many suburbs that rank near the top of Sydney’s deprivation index. They have injected pride into those communities in a way that makes supporters from more well-heeled clubs uncomfortable.
They are a model club, with great coaching, great players, clear succession planning and deep-rooted community connection. They are built to last, like a true dynasty.
There is a reason for pumping Penrith’s tyres. They’re everything we want the Warriors to be. So the Penrose-based club this year made a smart move and has tried to buy what the Penrith-based club has.
So again, welcome Andrew Webster, Penrith assistant coach.
Wave your wand; do your magic.
Thanks for all the great feedback regarding Isaac Ross’ letter to his mother Christine which featured on Friday. Isaac wrote to say he’s been blown away by the positive reaction. Ahead of the tournament opener on Saturday, and it looks like there will be a huge crowd at Eden Park, it is great to see the pioneers of the women’s game getting their dues. Here’s a lovely retrospective from Tony Smith in Stuff.
In 1991, the touring New Zealanders had to supply a touch judge for a warm-up game. Inside back Miriama Baker was attacked by a dog while running the line in a game against Bromley in Kent. [Coach Laurie] O’Reilly told reporters at the time that the doberman pinscher bit her three times and gave her “a nasty shock’’.
What a morning for New Zealand golf, with Ryan Fox notching his second DP World Tour win of the season at the prestigious Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. That tweet, too…
Meanwhile, Lydia Ko continues to be brilliant on a weekly basis with somebody or another always just a little bit more brilliant.
“What did I shoot? Six-under to finish the tournament on any given week is solid. Just the other girls played better than me,” she said.
Ko has now leapt to the head of the season standings, passing Minjee Lee and Brooke Henderson. Her consistency is remarkable.
The Rally of New Zealand was a fantastic event, even the last day on made-for-spectators circuits the drivers normally hate. It’s such a shame it won’t be coming back next year and that there are no guarantees for 2024 either.
This is just horrific and somewhat underplayed. If the scenes from the Indonesian football league - where more than 120 people have been killed following crowd unrest, had taken place in the Manchester derby this morning, it would be leading all bulletins, all the time, for the next week.
While the circumstances were different, my thoughts turned to the Hillsborough tragedy that caused the death of 97 Liverpool fans in 1989, and more recently the Champions League final in Paris. This excellent podcast explains just how close Paris came to being another Hillsborough, or Kanjuruhan Stadium.
While there was a lot of wholesome stuff that happened over the weekend, the dark side of sport has emerged. The spectre of cheating looms heavily over some highly competitive sports, most notably poker and fishing. Yep, poker and tournament fishing.
Both are wild stories. The poker one is a bit more involved, and would be impossible to summarise succinctly here, so I’d encourage you to read this link. Basically it involves one of the world’s best players (male) losing a huge-money hand to a semi-pro (female) after she either misread her hand, which seems unlikely, called his bluff, which seems even unlikelier given her own hand was so weak it couldn’t even cover most bluffs, or she knew what he had. Garrett Adelstein was so convinced he was cheated he confronted Robbi Jade Lew off camera and she paid him his money back, which is just flat out weird.
It has divided the poker world, with many leaping to her defence by saying she played the hand ridiculously poorly but just got lucky, or that she in fact played it perfectly. It is harder to explain why she returned the money, other than to suggest she felt threatened, but she did have a ‘minder’ at the table, so this explanation even feels like a stretch. Others have couched their terms a little more carefully, but have made it clear they feel the actions at the table were nefarious.
Either way, it’s a big moment for poker1.
If poker is murky, the next scandal is downright fishy - boom!
American duo Chase Cominsky and Jake Runyan were accused of cheating during the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship event in Ohio. They have been suspected of cheating in the past and have won hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of prizes over the years. This time it appears they have been caught hook, line and sinkers - boom, boom!
This follows on from accusations of cheating in chess, and we’re only a few years removed from the cheating scandal in one of my favourite sports, pigeon racing.
The world has gone mad.
The NFL, which operates in a slightly different world to any other, also went mad after the sickening dual injuries to Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
On Sunday a week ago, Tagovailoa suffered a clear and obvious concussion, momentarily losing motor function, but was cleared to return later that game as his team later claimed it was a back injury that caused the stumbles.
The Dolphins played again on Thursday night (Friday NZT) and Tagovailoa hit his head again and his body went into “fencing” response. He was taken to hospital and is now home recovering.
Understandably, there was outrage at Miami’s medical staff and coaches who let Tagovailoa re-enter the fray on the first day he was concussed, and then cleared him to play again four days later. The independent neurotrauma consultant involved has been reportedly fired, but many believe the Dolphins coaching staff and management have got away way too lightly.
THIS WEEK
“More Sumo,” you chanted after reading his terrific column on Ruby Tui that was not just about Ruby Tui. Scotty Stevenson is back on Wednesday as, I believe, is the BYC podcast after a couple of false starts over the past fortnight.
Incidentally, I play in a local monthly poker school for extraordinarily high stakes ($40 buy-in), and one of the great things about Texas Hold’em is that other than actually stealing chips from your opponents at the table, there’s no way to cheat. You’d have to be either Penn or Teller to be able to manipulate the deck and even if you could, there is such a huge range of hands available and multiple betting exit points that there’s no guarantee you can make a good hand win or pay out. Getting real-time information on your opponents’ hands, however, would be the golden goose.
Try as I might to be happy for Penrith, the overwhelming feeling I have is frustration that we had him, he wanted to stay, and we were too dumb to keep him. Sure, the Penrith Board have obviously empowered a culture of excellence at the Club but man, just look at how those players respond to Cleary after the match. They love that guy.
Good article on dynasties. Roosters best record over last 25 years . Broncos won in 2006 as well