If you had told me that after five rounds Penrith would be sitting in 15th position with one win and four consecutive losses, I would have laughed in your face.
Yet here we are, I say ‘we’ because as far as I’m concerned, we’re all in this together.
Supporters, players, coaching staff, the whole club. It’s just that as supporters we can’t actually do anything to help get the team out of this hole.
Except continue to support them that is.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have a constructive opinion on what’s going on, as long as it doesn’t become personal or destructive of course.
What I saw last Friday at CommBank Stadium was a team which appeared lost. They became frantic as time ticked away and scoreboard pressure was applied. At one point towards the end of the game they totally lost their composure and resembled a rabble.
Balls were being thrown behind players, over their heads, backwards, forwards, sideways. Even the best player in the game looked rattled and bereft of ideas.
It was difficult to watch.
I think what hurt most was being scored on by a 12-man team and even worse, the Cowboys constantly found an overlap time-and-time again – with only 12 men.
So, the defence is poor, the attack has no flow and the forwards are being torn apart.
After the game coach Ivan Cleary was fairly relaxed about the whole thing, while his son looked about as cranky and disappointed as I’ve ever seen him.
That’s probably why the dynamics work.
Last thing we need is for the coach to lose his head.
There are so many things to fix, I don’t even know where to start but I’ll make some suggestions.
For a start, Ivan needs to pick Blaize Talagi at five-eighth, there is simply no time to nurse him along anymore. The club bought him to play in that position and they have to give the kid the opportunity to do so.
It’s now or never. And it appears to be now, given Talagi was named in the number six jumper on Tuesday.
The coaching staff can’t be afraid to drop players who aren’t playing well, no matter how senior they are or how many first grade games they’ve played. No one’s position should be safe.
Anyway that’s it for me, I’m going to leave the rest of the job up to the professionals.
A lot of fans are saying they’re OK with how the season is going because the club has had a wonderful run over the last five years.
Not me, I’m not happy to give up and rest on what the team has achieved, I want more and I’m guessing the players do too.
To a man, they all want to win and keep winning. I’m sure none of them signed up for a ‘gap year’.
If you thought winning four titles in a row was hard, something tells me getting the season back on track after four-consecutive losses will be no picnic either.
But if anyone can do it, Ivan can. This club can.
There’s a wonderful expression that really resonates with me and I applied it to the current Panthers plight.
‘Life begins when you get back up!’
Right now, Penrith are on their knees, but I know they’ll fight hard, rise and get back up again. Now as supporters, let’s be careful not to push them back down.
Peter Lang
Peter Lang is an experienced sports writer, who has been covering rugby league for several decades. He first wrote Lang on League for the Weekender in the 1990s, and worked for Panthers on its famous Panthers Magazine for several years.