Rugby league loves a good villain. You know the type of player who can get under the skin of opposition players and supporters, a sophisticated sledger who can put their opponents off their game and thereby gaining an advantage for their team.
When you think rugby league player pests in 2024, you think of Bulldogs hooker Reed Mahoney, but surely the Panthers don’t have a player in their team who can rival him as the number one pest in the game?
If you answered ‘no’, you’d be wrong, Penrith has two sledgers who could rival Mahoney, both Jarome Luai and Liam Martin can well and truly hold their own in the sledging department.
Luai has been labelled ‘Public Enemy Number One’ on many occasions over the last few years and has made it known that he won’t change who he is for anyone.
Martin on the other hand is a pest, not only to opposition players – mainly the Queensland team where he has gained a solid reputation for rubbing the Maroons up the wrong way – but he also drives his fellow Panthers’ teammates crazy with his good natured but annoying antics every day at training.
I’ve also seen Sunia Turuva chirping at the opposition from time-to-time, particularly during a close game up at Newcastle last year. But compared to his fellow teammates in Luai and Martin, he’s on his ‘L’ plates.
However, Penrith have had also had their fair share of pests over the years going right back to the early ‘90s when Steve Carter played five-eighth for the club.
“Scarter”, as he was affectionately known, was good at stirring his opposite number to gain an advantage and for a while he even took a liking to making the great Bronco Wendell Sailor lose his cool every time he came up against him.
There were a couple of other Penrith Panthers during the ‘90s who knew how to give a bit of lip including halfback Gary Freeman. “Whiz” was never short of a clever quip both on-and-off the field and prided himself on getting under the skin of all the best players in the game.
In more recent times between 2010-2012, a cheeky little Panther named Travis Burns also knew how to niggle and annoy on the field.
Burns only spent three years at the Panthers but you could count on him to lock horns and grab the jersey of an opposition player at least once during a game, even if that player was twice as big as him.
Now I’ve saved the best to last.
There was one Panther, a very recent player too, who could give both Jarome Luai and Reed Mahoney a run for their money.
He played for Penrith for a two-season stint in 2018 and 2019 and his lips never stopped flapping both on and off the field.
His name: James Maloney.
Maloney may have been in the twilight of his career by the time he donned the black on his back, but I can still see him getting under the skin of Rabbitohs enforcer big Sam Burgess during several encounters, especially one at Penrith Stadium.
Maloney is currently an on-field trainer with the North Queensland Cowboys and I bet those lips and quips haven’t stopped flapping to this day.
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.