Penrith’s hopes of a fourth straight premiership rest on the shoulders — well, one shoulder — of star man Nathan Cleary.
GOING into Round 24, we all knew the clash between Penrith and Melbourne would shape the premiership race.
But no one expected things to shake out like they did.
With the scores locked 22-all with 14 minutes remaining in what felt like a minor premiership decider, the 20,516 fans packed into BlueBet Stadium were stunned into silence.
Their hero — captain and halfback Nathan Cleary — ducked under a Trent Loiero tackle then was brought to ground by Harry Grant and Nelson Asofa-Solomona.
As the Storm defenders regained their footing after an innocuous tackle, Cleary stayed down, his grimacing face buried in the turf.
The game’s premier playmaker walked off clutching his left shoulder, a Nick Meaney penalty goal settled the match in Melbourne’s favour, and the 2024 season took a dramatic turn.
Cleary’s unstable shoulder destabilised the Panthers’ grip on title favouritism.
Their hopes of a fourth straight title copped a hammer blow.
Entering September, the reigning premiers sweated on the fitness of their key man — the most crucial cog in yet another finals campaign.
Despite Penrith’s supremacy over the past four years, Cleary has suffered a wretched run with injuries.
He dislocated his right shoulder in Origin Two in 2021, sidelining him for five weeks. He then missed the first three rounds of 2022 following off-season shoulder surgery.
Last season, a torn hamstring cost Cleary seven weeks in the middle of the campaign. And only 10 minutes into the decider, he suffered a posterior cruciate ligament knee injury … but didn’t let that stop him from inspiring an extraordinary comeback over Brisbane.
This year, though, has been his most frustrating. Another hamstring ruled him out for five weeks after Round Three, and he only survived two games before re-aggravating the issue.
Then after stringing five excellent games together, his shoulder went against the Storm.
Between the start of 2020 — when Penrith’s period of dominance began — and the penultimate round of 2024, Cleary missed 37 of 127 games.
Without him, their winning percentage drops from a near-invincible 87 percent to a excellent-but-human 68 percent.
More than the number of wins, though, is the style of victory they can accomplish with Cleary on the park.
Only six days before he succumbed to his latest shoulder injury, he iced Penrith’s breathtaking rally against Parramatta — piling on three tries in six minutes then kicking the decisive sideline conversion to clinch the two-point win.
The Sunday before that, his 70th-minute try broke the deadlock with Newcastle.
And in Round 20, his two-point field goal sunk the Dolphins in golden point extra-time — his first game back from a 10-week layoff with that troublesome hamstring.
With their skipper steering the ship, the Panthers are content to get into a tug-of-war, then back the best game manager in the NRL to pilot them to the two competition points.
Compare that to the other premiership contenders in 2024.
The Melbourne Storm continue being the Melbourne Storm, pummelling weak opponents but relishing high-pressure tussles against strong ones — the signature of their two decades under Craig Bellamy. They’re on top of the ladder for a reason.
The Sydney Roosters are the most potent attacking side in the competition, making a habit of outgunning rivals in a shoot-out. If you score 30, we’ll score 36.
And the resurgent Canterbury Bulldogs have mounted their charge to September on the back of the most miserly defence in the league, suffocating sides without the ball. Rarely do they leak more than 20 points, laying the foundation for workmanlike, professional victories.
Penrith, on the other hand, have made an art form of the arm wrestle. Nine of their wins this campaign have come by eight points or less.
They don’t need to blow teams away every week — instead, they can trust their captain to get them home from almost any position.
And there’s no better example than last year’s decider.
The Panthers trailed 24-8 as the clock ticked over the hour mark on the 2023 Grand Final, after Ezra Mam’s exhilarating 11-minute hat trick early in the second half.
But Cleary single-handedly dragged his club off the canvas in a performance for the ages.
First he slipped through ex-team-mate Kurt Capewell to release Moses Leota to kickstart the comeback, then an inspirational 40-20 lifted the Panthers again.
Cleary threw the final pass for Stephen Crichton’s score, and added the extras to close the gap to four.
And with three and a half minutes remaining, Cleary skipped past opposite number Adam Reynolds, then sped between Billy Walters, Jordan Riki and Reece Walsh to dive over beneath the sticks.
Fittingly, the number seven lined up the match-sealing conversion from directly in front to crown Penrith champions for a third straight year.
That sort of result will give them massive belief they can add another piece of silverware to their bulging collection in 2024 … so long as Cleary’s shoulder comes good.
If their 26-year-old ace can return to navigate his team to the cliffhanging wins they’ve become accustomed to, a fourth consecutive title beckons.
The enormity of that achievement shouldn’t be overlooked.
For comparison with the British context, St Helens obviously achieved the feat from 2019 to 2022. Before that, though, the seven-straight Wigan team of the early ‘90s is the only side to climb the mountain four times in a row.
Such long premiership streaks are similarly rare down under. Parramatta are the last side to collect even three straight crowns between 1981 and 1983. The iconic St George (1956-66) and South Sydney (1925-29) outfits are the only teams to surpass that.
And without diminishing those historic accomplishments, it’s far harder to pile on back-to-back premierships today — an era of longer seasons, more clubs and stringent salary caps designed to equalise the competition.
If Penrith do manage to hoist the Provan-Summons Trophy on Sunday, 6th October, it would put Ivan Cleary’s charges in truly rarefied air.
But their chances of doing so depend on the fitness of one man: the injury-prone maestro in the number seven.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 501 (October 2024)
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