Panthers coach Ivan Cleary couldn’t help but take a cheeky dig at his much-hyped left edge following Penrith’s shock loss to the Bulldogs.
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The Panthers’ left side, consisting of five-eighth Blaize Talagi and two of the form players in the comp in Casey McLean and Tom Jenkins, were exposed by the Bulldogs’ attack at Accor Stadium.
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Talagi especially. The young playmaker missed six tackles but the whole left edge was in arrears as the Bulldogs’ right side recorded four line breaks.
McLean and Jenkins entered the game in sensensational form, even earning serious Origin buzz, which Cleary referenced in his post-game press conference.
“Yeah, maybe they’re getting ready for origin camp,” Cleary replied with a chuckle to a question on how he assessed his left edge.
“A couple of boys went back a couple of pegs, but as I’ve mentioned, they’re young and it’s just a good part of the experience for them.
“I’m sure they’ll bounce back.”
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Cleary was disappointed in his side’s performance as a whole, in what was his son Nathan’s 200th NRL game.
Penrith have had things all their own way over the first five games of the season, but fell in an early 16-0 hole against the Dogs.
In typical Penrith fashion, they turned the game in their favour to level it up at 16 before the Bulldogs won the battle in the second half.
“We showed some decent signs in that second part of the first half, I didn’t really feel like we were playing our best footy,” Cleary said when reflecting on the performance.
”To their credit, they were just harder than we were and we just didn’t respond that well … they fully deserved their win. We got reminded what a good hard game of footy looks like and I’m sure will be better for it.”
Penrith were the first team in NRL history to win their first five games by at least 20 points or more and entered this weekend with a points differential of a whopping 150.
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Their red-hot start sparked debate whether the Panthers could go through the season unbeaten.
While disappointed, co-captain Isaah Yeo is finding a small silver lining with the defeat.
“Rugby league is the ultimate leveler so it might be the best thing for us to maybe stop a little bit of that noise of people talking about being unbeaten through the season,” Yeo said.
“That’s certainly not the case now but I think we’ll be able to look back and just learn lessons from it.
“We’ve been able to learn lessons from the last few weeks as well but ultimately we’ve sort of been in big leads throughout the game whereas tonight we were sort of a fairway behind and then it’s just a different flow to the game.
“I think we’ll be able to learn lessons from that and then ultimately, we’ll be better for it. It’ll stop a little bit of noise which is not a bad thing.”
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