Penrith Panthers: The Bad, the Ugly and the Awful

The Penrith Panthers sacked a coach while the team sat 4th on the ladder in 2018 and proceeded to poach another bloke they had also once punted to replace him.

Whether they realised it at the time or not, the resulting storyline and scrutiny put a lot of pressure on the team to perform. Those are win-now moves, and as anybody that has kept up with the 2019 NRL season would know, the Panthers aren't winning much at all.

They've won just two of their opening eight games, and unlike many of the other 2-6 teams, the Panthers haven't displayed regular signs of improvement.

MATCH PAGE: Wests Tigers v Penrith Panthers

The primary issue for the Panthers is their inefficient attack. While the points came in bunches and late in games throughout 2018, the Panthers attack was at least capable. Averaging 20.9 points per game, they were a middle of the road team overall, but one of the most dangerous in the NRL when switched on.

It's a different story in 2018.

They're 15th in scoring with 14.1 points per game, and the rest of the numbers make for miserable reading.

The Panthers are their own worst enemy a lot of the time.

Their captain, James Tamou, summed it up best following their latest loss:

"We had too many penalties, too much ill-discipline and it's the same thing every week for us."

They are second in penalties conceded with 7.9 per game. If they are ever in a position to mount pressure and tire a defensive line, a penalty never seems to be far away. James Maloney - a senior player and influencer on the side - is once again towards the top of the list of misdemeanants.

Maloney is joint with Latrell Mitchell for the most penalties conceded this season with 12 in eight games. It follows a fairly consistent trend too. The 32-year old was 3rd in the NRL for penalties conceded in 2014 and 2015, 2nd in 2016, 1st in 2017 and 20th in 2018. He's a serial offender and it's not helping the Panthers this year with everything else that is going wrong for them.

If Penrith isn't giving the opposition team a piggyback up the field, they're making one of their 12.8 errors per game - third-most in the NRL.

It's translating into an abysmal 68.6% completion rate.

Completion rates have never been a reliable metric to measure how well a football team is playing, but 68.8% is poor no matter how you approach it. The seven-win Tigers in 2013 are the last team to finish a season with a completion rate below 70%.

When the Panthers do manage to hold onto the ball, they're doing very little with it.

The backline, in particular, has been especially disappointing.

It took up until the 78th minute in Round 4 for a Penrith backline player to score a try in 2019. The tryscorer was Dylan Edwards who has since been dropped following one of the worst first-grade performances in recent years.

Lucky to still be out there himself, Josh Mansour is having a career-worst year so far in 2019. He's scored just one try in seven games while running for a career-low 135 metres per game. 

Dallin Watene-Zelezniak has been shuffled around and not come close to reproducing the sort of form that saw him nominated for the Golden Boot at the end of last season. His brother, Malakai, isn't of first-grade quality but has been required to fill in for the injured Dean Whare in recent weeks.

Outside of Waqa Blake, and more recently Caleb Aekins, the Panthers outside backs have been ineffective.

Remarkably, but somewhat fitting given the state of their season, Blake has managed to get himself stood down from Penrith's Round 9 game against Wests for misreading the schedule and arriving late to training.

While they can only do so much behind an error-ridden and beaten middle, the Panthers halves haven't been up to scratch.

They are the incumbent New South Wales halves pairing, but nobody will be surprised to see one of Maloney or Nathan Cleary miss out on selection for Game 1 of the 2019 State of Origin series.

With only eight try assists between them throughout the opening eight rounds, Brad Fittler is going to be taking note of how inefficient this Panthers attack is with Cleary and Maloney pulling the strings.

The NRL average for points per tackle inside the opposition 20-metre line is 0.72 points. That's slightly below what the Sharks are producing with three of their most creative players in Shaun Johnson, Wade Graham and Matt Moylan spending extended periods on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, the Panthers are recording a poultry 0.43 points per tackle inside the opposition 20-metre line to have the worst scoring efficiency in the NRL.

Their good ball sets are predictable and one-dimensional. It's all short balls and hitups throughout the 33.6 tackles they consume inside the 20-metre line each game. On the rare occasions it is shifted, it's too lateral with nobody prepared to straighten up.

Outside of feeding Viliame Kikau and asking him to be big and strong, the Panthers don't ask many difficult questions of a defence. 

Even up against a 12-man Raiders side for ten minutes last week, the Panthers couldn't breach the line. In fact, they conceded a try despite defending with an extra man.

Happiness is a function of expectation, and right now, those at the foot of the mountains are miserable.

The Panthers came into 2019 carrying some lofty expectations. Some were put on by their own actions, others were by outsiders expecting great things from a club that has been building towards a premiership contending season following three consecutive years in the Top 8. 

Nevertheless, they're falling grossly short of every expectation anybody had for them two months ago and offer little confidence of an immediate turnaround.

The Panthers have got time and did make the Top 8 from this position two years ago. But anything short of a win this week against the Tigers will all but end their finals hopes.

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