Isaiah Iongi will debut for Penrith this Sunday becoming Panther #626 replacing the injured Dane Laurie in the clash with the Knights at Bluebet Stadium.
Frustrating game to watch, but I always thought we had them. I thought Tago had his best game of the year, and Iongi was solid on debut. Will rewatch the game when I get home
I can’t remember ever seeing the Penrith crowd so angry as occurred today. The second Newcastle try (Frizell) was from a blatant forward pass. Then Tango is cited for his tackle on Ponga, killing To’o’s try, yet a worse incident last week put Laurie out for a couple of games with not a whisper of a penalty or citing. Earlier you’d need the eye of an eagle to see the separation that was arbitrarily applied to disallow Tango’s try. The penalty to Newcastle in front, towards the end, was nitpicking, plain and simple; Crossland’s successful milking suggests that he comes from a dairy farming background. And wasn’t Cleary tripped at some stage? The award for effort has to go to the cabal of officials who tied themselves in knots in a very nearly successful attempt to find ways to disenfranchise (aka ‘rob) Penrith of a rightful victory. We’ll probably see a similar performance when the NRL try to explain how it was all OK (‘nothing to see here; just lie back and think of England’). I call ‘bullshit’, as was the incensed cry from today’s crowd. IC remains passive (publicly); can you imagine how certain other coaches would vent.
Once again our opponents came to hunt the hunted, and played pretty well in fact, making for a close game. Completion rates were very good, with the knights going for long periods completing their sets and kicking deep.
A couple of disallowed tries for us, and a try for the knights from a clear forward pass made the scores close, but again the boys got the job done, which at this point is all that matters.
Iongi on debut was very good and so deserves a mention, but we were pretty good across the park.
And now this week a similar scenario, with hopefully another win.
I 100% agree Pete, but IMO this further enhances the Penrith cause. We ARE going to face the impact of poor judgement calls, it’s akin to the tall poppy syndrome this country has. Why we need to bash our superstars until they fall is beyond me. These recent weeks need serious review from the officials, you cannot continually target the better team for your 50/50’s.
From our standpoint though, this builds on our game plan resolve, don’t panic, don’t whinge, just get on with playing footy, if it takes us to the last 5 minutes, that is where we will go.
Like i said previously, still PLENTY to work on, although our attack was better, still massive improvement. We will also have a few video sessions where certain people are running out of the defensive line…not good, we are great when we have the Panther wall but every brick in that wall needs to be aligned !!
If a team goes into a game relying on favourable officiating to win, they will lose more often than not. I thought Ponga’s ‘High Shot’ on Tago after his break was a regulation tackle. We got the penalty for that one, but it did stop our momentum on a potential scoring play. So even when we got a favourable decision it still sucked.
It’s important the boys keep banking these wins. We’re currently only one win ahead of the roosters who have a far superior differential - So it’s important we stay ahead of them if we want to have that home final in Week 1.
Good news - it’s two wins although they do have the bye.
Both Roosters and Panthers have the same draw in terms of teams: Rabbits, Raiders, Titans, Eels, the only difference being Roosters have a bye and we have Storm.
Sharks are also 2 wins behind.
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Wind: SE 13km/h)
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ABC Sydney 702AM [LIVE]
Sunday 4/8 2:00pm
Positional Change
Team Lists and Match Officials have been updated.
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