Penrith donned the striped jerseys of their 2003 victory when they took the park at BlueBet on Friday night for the first stage in their campaign for a NRL threepeat. The year had started a little rocky at the foot of the mountains, with a 13-12 golden point loss to St. Helens in the World Club Challenge, and they would suffer exactly the same scoreline here, under much the same conditions – torrential bursts of rain (if not quite as consistently sodden) and a pervasive humidity that imbued the home crowd with a sticky sense of homegrown solidarity.

On the other side of the Steeden, the Broncos were coming off a heartbreaking 2022 season – top four, against all the odds, for six weeks, and clinging to the top eight for seventeen weeks, but ultimately finishing ninth to miss out on finals football. They needed to begin the year with a bang, and they got it with their first victory on Penrith home ground since 2009, along with Kevin Walters’ first ever win against the Panthers as Brisbane coach – a stark result for a Penrith outfit who had only failed to secure the points at BlueBet two times since 2020.

The win was all the more emotional in that this marked the beginning of the final season at the old Penrith stadium before the club upgrades in 2024. A mildly elegiac quality suffused the game amidst the adrenalin then, not least because the Panthers had lost two of the key playmakers in their extraordinary run over the last two years – Api Koroisau and Viliame Kikau, who headed east for the Tigers and Dogs respectively. The three-time Dally M second-rower had been replaced by Luke Garner, who had gone from bottom to top of the ladder overnight.

Garner was always going to struggle on Kikau’s old edge, but his growing pains were complicated by Penrith’s decision to keep Mitch Kenny on at hooker until the 54^th minute, when Soni Luke finally came onto the park, where he ended up scoring the try that almost guaranteed the Panthers the win. By contrast, Corey Paix, who had been put on the bench after a strong preseason, was brought on 27 minutes in to give Billy Walters a break, providing the Broncos with a more consistent flow round the ruck and a smoother rhythm at key points.

Both teams also had different fates when it came to fullbacks, since Reece Walsh still hadn’t fully recovered from his fractured eye socket, meaning that Selwyn Cobbo had to step into the custodian role, while Dylan Edwards by contrast leaned straight back into the superb running game that saw him notch up 223 on average last year. Tonight, he had a cracking game, dominating runs (23) and metres (234), with Brian To’o next in line on metres (190) and comfortably topping post-contacts (76), which made Brisbane’s win all the more striking.

While this should have been a milestone match for Nathan Cleary, who only needed one try for the half century and one goal for the half millennium, Adam Reynolds led his Broncos to an absolute masterclass in the rain. Their brilliance was consistent, but crystallised around a Herbie Farnworth double at the end of the first quarter, the second try an instant classic that saw him go shoulder to shoulder with Bizza before reaching over the Penrith winger, and taking maximum advantage of the sodden BlueBet surface to bang the Steeden down for four.

So brilliant were these two tries that they were enough to propel Brisbane through the rest of the game, which ended with an effortless Reyno one-pointer to seal the clutch win. While Penrith bookended the remainder of the tryscoring with crossovers from Stephen Crichton and Luke at the 7^th and 76^th minute, a botched Cleary two-pointer in the dying moments made the difference, as did an extraordinarily robust Brisbane defensive line that saw Kotoni Staggs, Reyno and Walters all make trysavers on Jarome Luai, the last two in the final seven minutes.

No doubt, Brisbane were dampened by losing Staggs to an HIA test, and then again for the final ten minutes with sustained cramping, much as the Panthers had to witness the sorry spectacle of Scott Sorensen leaving the park for good four minutes into the second stanza after his head made brutal contact with Keenan Palasia’s hip. But the Broncos’ spirit won through, testament to Haas chanting “first ten, first ten” on his way down to the tunnel, in contrast to a Panthers outfit who had geed themselves up by preparing for the “last twenty.”

Reynolds led his men out to a booing Penrith home crowd, and Payne Haas, Brisbane player of the year for the last four seasons, took the opening carry. Liam Martin came in hard to drive Corey Jensen back three metres on the third play, and Walters shaped to kick on the fourth from within the forty, but found Haas blocking his way. With Reyno launching a wobbly bomb from roughly the same spot, this marked the start of an early positional challenge for the Broncos, who took a few sets to warm up before they finally cruised into enemy territory.

Reynolds would target Suni Turuva’s corner over the course of the night, but the stand-in backliner was staunch for his first take here, collecting the footy at the twenty and making his way to the thirty, where he met a brick wall in Jensen and Haas. Kenny got stuck straight into his role as full-time hooker with a dummy half dart to clear space for Isaah Yeo to hit halfway on tackle four, before Cleary kicked his first one of the season, setting his sights on Jesse Arthars’ corner, where the ex-Warrior did well to get it amid a rabid swathe of Penrith jerseys.

Cobbo made his first big statement at fullback a beat later, dummying to take a crack at the line, and yet Reyno was still booting it from his own end on the last. He attempted to compensate for the position with a magnificent strike, soaring it far above the BlueBet roof, but underestimated the wind at his back. All Edwards had to do was wait casually for it to bounce into touch to nab his men an additional tackle, which Garner used to make his first really enterprising run up the left, already high on the flow of graduating to a top-tier team.

Garner’s charge laid the platform for the Panthers to pivot right, where Crichton stuck his nose through the line before Ezra Mam and Farnworth converged on him. No surprise that the hosts became the first team to reach the twenty (Brisbane hadn’t even left their own end), as Cleary chipped fifteen out and Arthars came up with a second daring collect. Pummelling defence induced Walters to put boot to ball just outside the forty, but the dampness of the turf meant that a brilliant angle wasn’t enough to secure his team the 40/20.

Instead, Edwards simply scooped up the Steeden and returned to the fray, while Penrith got the first restart of the game soon after, thanks to a ruck error from Patty Carrigan. Luai was starting to look pretty restless up the left edge now, and James Fisher-Harris built on his speed by ramming straight into Carrigan. Kenny dummied left on the next play, and only half-heartedly sent it inside for a Moses Leota steadier, before shifting it out to the wing again, where Fish reached the ten and Cleary sent out a beautiful wide ball for Luai on the sideline.

It was the clutchy kind of Penrith play that makes games, so that rendered it all the more remarkable when Staggs cleaned up Luai in one of the most clinical tackles he’s ever executed. Two plays after that, Walters made fifteen from dummy half, and with Carrigan forty-five out on tackle three, Staggs finally brought them into Penrith territory. Reynolds weighted the bomb right this time, continuing to torment Turuva’s corner as Staggs, who was absolutely crushing it in defence, slammed in to prevent the young winger making a metre on the return.

Yet Turuva had the last laugh, taking a recovery run on tackle three that ended up laying the foundation for the first great Penrith sequence of the season. This started with a superb series of sweeping passes to the right edge that grew so mellifluous in their momentum, as the footy moved through Edwards, Cleary and Crichton, that Martin had to take it behind his shoulder. He didn’t decelerate, or skip a beat, tucking the ball under his right arm, fending off Mam, and then offloading through a second Mam effort to pass the reins back inside to Edwards.

The game’s gentlest fullback danced through a Kurt Capewell ankle tap and was in open space by the thirty, where he delivered a balletic assist for Crichton right when Walters made contact. Critter didn’t have clean sailing to the chalk either, but he made it look easy as he got outside Cobbo and planted it down decently close to the posts. With Cleary banging through his 500^th career goal, this was starting to look more like the Penrith outfit of the 2020s, and it felt likely that a torrent of tries, perhaps even a landslide, would following in Critter’s wake.

Instead, the Broncos built towards one of the great tries of the season, as Cobbo stepped into the spotlight. First he sent a floater out to the right edge, where Arthars withstood a Penrith pack determined to drag him over the sideline, and then he came up with the best take so far, stealing the Steeden from a trajectory that seemed destined for Turuva’s outstretched arms. Finally, he lost it a play later, with Fish and Kenny both in the tackle, and Leota was well on his way to the try line with it before he was called back for what was deemed a Fish strip.

Mam, in turn, settled into one of his strongest stints at five-eighth yet, setting up Capewell to break the ten on the left edge, before taking a crack at the line himself. Martin and Yeo repelled him, but for the first time the Panthers were working it off their own line, only breaking the twenty with an Edwards charge midway through the count. Luai compensated with a driving run up the left and over the forty on the next play, so that Turuva was well over halfway by the time he played it for Kenny to set up Cleary’s first soaring bomb of the season.

This was also his first kick directed at Oates, rather than Arthars, and the wiry winger did well to collect it. The game was starting to drift towards Brisbane, who now had their first bump off their line with a slow peel from Leota. Cobbo straightened off the left boot to hit the red zone, then scooped up a quick play-the-ball from Walters to arrive five out, where Martin and Edwards had to really scramble to hold him up. Poised at the peak flow of this last sequence, Reynolds parlayed all this escalating momentum into a stunning display of his footy genius.

Heading left, the little general took one less step than usual, and got the ball down low as if to kick, tempting Crichton into reaching out his full wingspan for the intercept, only to loft it over for Farnworth to scoot back infield and score behind the posts. Reyno had effectively intercepted Critter’s intercept, leaning into an opposition play that most other halfbacks would shy away from, and the upshot was that Farnworth crossed all but untouched, dancing away from a last-ditch Edwards dive before Reynolds added the extras to level the scoreline.

A light rain had started to fall at the foot of the mountains as Haas took the first charge of the restart, and by the time that Riki and Jensen had churned up the dirt in his wake, the clouds had burst over BlueBet. Cobbo crossed halfway, and Reynolds sent the Steeden into the watery tumult as Carrigan and Arthars kept Turuva in the twenty with a strong tackle on the return. To’o built some space with a driving run towards the forty, and Sorensen chugged it over halfway, but all in all this wasn’t one of the most flamboyant Penrith sets in the game.

While Martin and To’o delivered a strong chase to compensate for the lack of kick pressure on Cobbo beneath Luai’s first bomb, Brisbane took advantage of the sudden wet weather with an instant classic on their very next set. Walters started it in the middle of the park, where he headed left, dodged back inside, shaped for the kick, and found Haas in his way once more, before busting past a Martin tackle, and offloading through Kenny and Sorensen back to Mam, who responded with a scintillating split-second right foot step to elude Cleary.

So synergetic were Walters and Mam that it was like watching the two leads in a ballet performance, as the young five-eighth gathered their shared choreography into the run of his career. He snuck through Yeo and Crichton just before they converged on him, fending off Critter as he broke into open space, and put it on the boot thirty out, handing the baton on to Farnworth, who went shoulder to shoulder with To’o in a contest for the ages, both men arriving in goal right as the rain was starting to crest, like a pre-emptive ticker tape parade.

Bizza dove for it first, albeit a beat too early, relying on the sodden ground to carry him the last half metre, but instead finding his outstretched hand slide off the Steeden as Herbie tumbled over him to pop it down. As the future Dolphin rose in the rain, this was pure rugby league, iconic footy, galvanizing Reyno into a beautiful kick that swung to the right and back over the crossbar to put the Broncos six ahead on the board. They wouldn’t score another try in tonight’s win, and yet this was good enough to already feel like the last word on the game.

Penrith brought some muscular defence to the restart, as one flamboyant pile on after another ensured Carrigan was only at the thirty midway through, so Capewell had to summon a superhuman effort to drag four defenders to the cusp of halfway. Again, Haas brought it into enemy territory, where Reyno bombed to Turuva, who caught it clean, but fell back onto the turf in the face of a mammoth Staggs chase. In fact, the Panthers looked like they might struggle for position, until To’o offloaded through Carrigan for Kenny to flick it out to Edwards.

The mini-sweep ended with Garner being slammed to ground by Staggs, but Edwards regathered momentum with his third successive run to hit the Brisbane forty. Cleary might have concluded with a boilerplate end-over-ender, but that was all he needed to take advantage of the slippery surface, as Cobbo now found a Penrith pack dragging him over the sideline from about eight metres in field. Tensions flared for a moment, with Reynolds apparently taking issue with Kenny’s involvement, but they were over as soon as they began.

The mountain men had a full set in the red zone, with Sorensen taking the first charge, and Fish breaking through a Walters tackle to reach the ten, before Cleary tried to duck under the defence and take a crack at the chalk himself. Kenny followed with a short dummy half ball to put Fish over beside the left padding, where he would have scored if not for a staunch Carrigan effort. Cleary grubbered on the last, Reyno stuck out a boot to deflect it and missed, and Staggs culminated his heroic period of defence by launching it back into the field of play.

If anything, Kotoni, who had slipped into the fullback role, garnered too much here, since the head knock from Turuva that won his men a penalty also saw him taken off the park for an HIA, as Palasia jumped off the bench earlier than expected. Capewell now shifted to the centres, and the set ended with Reynolds hoisting it high from halfway, the footy hanging in the roiling air above the stadium before Edwards contained all that risk with an effortless charge, heroically setting his sights on his own ten before meeting a Riki-helmed pack chase.

Again, the Panthers were searching for position, and again To’o got them out of their own end, this time by winning them their first penalty in the form of a Flegler offside. Three plays later, on the brink of the red zone, Cleary opted for an early chip, but it didn’t pay off, since Cobbo gathered it on the line and brought it five metres back in field, before Oates jumped into his slipstream to clear the ten despite the most committed tackle from Martin so far. The exhilaration of those two Brisbane tries was now fully absorbed back into this arm wrestle.

Brisbane had another crisis on their right sideline a moment later, although it now came from Capewell, who was a bit rusty in Staggs’ boots as the Panthers squeezed him towards the chalk. His cough-up led to some Cleary poetry, albeit not a try, as Garner got them rolling, Edwards took a forward-like charge to bring his run metre up to 145 in a little over a quarter of football, Flegler tried to strip it from Sorensen, and Cleary drove deep into the line to make way for Leniu, before feeding it out for Garner, who was smothered by Arthars and Reynolds.

Finally, Cleary chipped a flat one towards the left padding, and got the aim exactly right, as the Steeden ricocheted straight back into the outstretched arms of Martin, who deserved the try after all the hard work he’d put in this evening. For a moment it looked like he’d nabbed it, as he ploughed into Cobbo, twisted around and reached the tip towards the turf, only for Mam to storm in and bump it clean out of his grasp. It had been the kind of genius Penrith play that nearly always comes off, so the hosts were unsettled by remaining six points behind.

On top of that, the Broncos received their fourth penalty in their own half a few plays later, thanks to an offside from Garner. In a rare misstep, however, Mam drove it into the line, realised he had no options, and handed a bludger out to Flegler, who put it down and brought this attack to an end. Penrith responded with a methodical set, as Crichton, Martin, Leniu, Sorensen and Yeo all carted it ten metres (Critter trying to milk a penalty) and Cleary’s kick travelled about the same distance, before Oates leaped a metre off the grass to clean it up.

Once again, Haas brought it into enemy territory, where Reyno skidded it low along the ground, and then over the sideline, to get his men some breathing space. The Panthers found themselves working it off their ten, but made decent headway, even if Edwards was repelled from the Brisbane half by a sturdy Reynolds-Palasia tackle on the fourth. Cleary was over halfway a beat later in any case, and Critter hit the forty on the same play, where he won six again off a Mam ruck infringement. Penrith had surged from one end of the park to the other.

By midway through the count, Cleary was inside the ten, where he faced off a Flegler tackle like a forward, and paved the way for Sorensen to take a shot at the line, summoning another big defensive effort from Flegler, assisted this time by Paix off the bench. Before the Panthers could build to a peak, however, Oates intercepted a harbour bridge ball from Cleary out to the right wing, and while Kenny and Garner tried to reset the rhythm with a huge hit on Riki, Palasia was already poking his nose through the line and shaping for the offload a play later.

Palasia was eventually contained, but the Broncos were building momentum again now, as Capewell launched a round-the-corner offload to Riki as he was crashing to ground, and Reynolds chipped on the fly. Izack Tago took it, and lost it just as quickly, as Reyno copped two shudders to the back, the first from a Garner tackle, and the second when Tago tumbled over the top. With four minutes to the sheds, Brisbane had a scrum from the twenty, and stacked it left, only to find Mam contained, directing them back to the other side of the park.

The big men now stepped up, as Riki bumped off Critta to hit the ten, Haas stormed into a Yeo-Garner combo, and a dummy half dart from Jensen got Palasia to within a metre of the chalk. Farnworth brought it all together with a skittering kick in goal, which Edwards missed, but to Penrith’s advantage, since nobody else touched it either. From one of the fastest Brisbane periods all night, the Panthers had extracted a twenty-metre restart, and reprised their earlier charge from chalk to chalk when Riki infringed the ruck late in the tackle count.

Turuva started by building space up the left, where he was smothered by Capewell, and Yeo followed with a searching run, showing it a few times before Haas finally stopped him. Sorensen danced his way to the ten, and Cleary shot it out to Luai, who reined it in one-handed, but couldn’t do much in the face of his old team mate Capewell, who was having a strong defensive stint here. Kenny, like Yeo, seemed to be sizing up the entire field as he dummied, drifted, and couldn’t quite get Edwards past a Palasia-Carrigan desperation tackle.

The Panthers had already had their hearts broken with Martin’s almost-try, and it happened again now, on the cusp of the break, when Garner’s hands came down on either side of the footy as Arthars batted it into touch for the last great clutch effort of this scintillating first stanza. It would have been rousing for the ex-Tiger to score in his first game in Penrith colours, but it was not to be, as the rain started to torrent down again, Reyno chipped a low dropout into the thirty, and Leniu lost it soon after, ushering in a sober trip to the sheds for the hosts.

The rain had calmed down after half time, and Staggs was back from his HIA, as Paix bookended the first Penrith set with a pair of stellar defensive efforts, slamming into Sorensen on the opening carry, and then tumbling onto Edwards, who had clocked an astonishing 173 metres on the first forty, to force the knock-on late in the count. Brisbane had their first set from halfway, and were at the twenty four plays in off a sharp run from Flegler, before a quick dummy half scoot from Paix put Mam in the ten where he won six again off a Leniu ruck error.

From there, Reyno dragged it out to the right, Staggs almost cruised through a Luai ankle tap, before the play shifted back in field, and Riki came down five metres shy of the line. Haas hedged his bets before the crossbar, dancing from one boot to another, and Paix continued a sterling stint off the bench by getting Flegler right to the chalk beside the left padding, where only a Martin-Cleary desperation combo repelled him at the death. Reynolds capped it off with a beautifully weighted grubber that Tago only just popped down with Staggs upon him.

Cleary responded with a low kick that barely cleared the Penrith forty, Sorensen left the park for an HIA (that he would fail) after copping some heavy contact from Palasia, and Mam hit the ten, where he was greeted by another Martin-Cleary combo, before Haas executed one of the silkiest runs of the night. Drifting left, he banged off Leniu once, twice, and then planted the big left arm fend into Garner, halting the big second-rower just long enough to use the other arm for an offload back to Palasia, who set up Mam to cross the ten for a second time.

Now, the young five-eighth dropped it on the boot for a sneaky grubber that To’o took a metre in goal, as Oates and Farnworth piled on top to prevent him making it back over the chalk. It was muscular defence, and a second straight dropout for Brisbane. Once more, Cleary only got it to the forty, and once again Mam hit the ten on the left, laying a platform for Flegler to bring it within five of the line, where Edwards, Garner and Leota slammed to ground. Reyno swept right, Cobbo bobbled the collect and tried to compensate with a kick to match Mam’s.

The whole timing was off by now though, and he booted it too far, as the Panthers got stuck into a recovery set, which Cleary ended with a high ball from his own forty that Oates took on the fly. Reluctant to leave the growing momentum of those two dropouts behind, Brisbane stayed on their left edge, only shifting back to the other side with the kick, which Turuva scooped up right on the sideline, tempted for a millisecond to allow it to roll into touch, since the Panthers’ big boppers were looking fatigued now, and only over the thirty by tackle three.

They needed six again – and they got it when To’o forced a ruck error from Palasia with his first really emphatic charge of the night. Yet this burst of position ended with Cobbo getting some closure for his overlong kick, by chasing down a Luai boot, and waiting for it to go dead at the clutch with Turuva on his pack. It was a great turnaround for the Broncos, and they were buoyed further as Marty Taupau came off the bench for his first stint in Brisbane colours, garnering a rampant response from a crowd who suspected his first pass to Haas was forward.

For the second time, though, the Broncos didn’t quite nail the last play on the right, as Reynolds tucked it under the arm, chugged into the corner, and flicked Mam a backhander that was just a little too mercurial, and so trickled into touch. Still, Penrith were working it off their line, with only a committed Martin run on the third bringing it over the thirty, and even then ending in a cough-up that saw them send it upstairs in an effort to prove a Farnworth strip, only for an immediate decision that this had been a regulation tackle and a clear drop.

The Panthers were starting to look agitated, and while Brisbane might have seemed assured by comparison as they packed the scrum from the thirty, a new volatility started to percolate into the third quarter – a willingness from both sides to explore, take risks, and embark upon more precarious brinksmanlike plays. It started with Penrith, who put Cobbo over the sideline on the other side of the park, and from even further back in field. Tago came in low, Turuva got the momentum and then Salmon joined the fray as the pack accrued more participants.

This was a good rhythm-builder as news came down from the sheds that Sorensen had failed his HIA, but Cobbo hit back quickly with a driving tackle to repel Cleary five metres, and over his own forty. It marked the start of a new intensity in both attack and defence, as Leota recouped the position by taking a precarious pass from Kenny and muscling up to halfway, where Cleary lobbed one of his more dangerous long-rangers of the night. The bounce defed Cobbo, then almost defied Coates, who parlayed it into a fifteen metre charge on the return.

True to the escalating to-and-fro of this new period in the match, Leota followed his splendid charge with an individual steal on Farnworth, a nice bit of closure after the failed Captain’s Challenge too. Yet right when the Panthers should have peaked, they sunk into their most anticlimactic set so far, drifting left, where Salmon was slammed to ground by Cleary, Taupau and Riki, and then heading back to the other wing, where Critta delivered such a sluggish grubber that he barely got boot to ball. Coates had absolutely no trouble taking it on the turf.

Leniu might have come in hard on Staggs to reassert the Penrith propulsion, but the Broncos had still made it to their forty by the time Reyno launched a beautiful torpedo into opposition territory. Finally, Luke trotted off the bench, not a moment too soon, and right when Farnworth got pinged for a slow peel, slotting into dummy half as Kenny joined the tall timber, and making an amazing dash on tackle two to bring his men from twenty to ten, accelerating rapidly enough to dishevel Cobbo as he attempted to intercept Cleary on the following play.

Penrith had the scrum from inside the red zone, and Cleary was everywhere now, making a huge left edge charge on tackle one, as Reyno and Riki scrambled to down him five out, the little general conceding six again in the process. Leota exploded towards the crossbar, Yeo channeled that same energy out to the right, where he was stopped by Carrigan, and a Cleary-Luai no-looker set up a manic sweep that ended with Staggs desperately inserting himself between Turuva and the line, as Cleary barked out orders, high on the flow of leading his men.

The Panthers certainly had a new spring in their step now, but their speed was starting to overtake even them, as an Edwards tip-on cost them ten metres, and Oates pummeled Critta to prevent him making up the position. Luai responded with a left foot pivot and offload to Cleary, but the play was starting to dissociate a bit – the period of maximum acceleration was passing – and Cleary also devolved into one of his shallowest kicks so far. Staggs had no trouble taking it on the line, and Oates got Brisbane out of trouble with a hard third play run.

It was a small victory then that Reyno was at the thirty by the time he sent a long low boot to Edwards, who was back at his own thirty by the time he offloaded for Turuva to continue the return. Mam now stepped into the spotlight again with a pair of forward-like charges, the first of them, on Tago, so tough that it initially looked like the impact must have come from Carrigan, who joined the tackle a millisecond after. A second low shot from Mam bent Martin back into the line, but he still got the offload away to Edwards, and Cleary stepped up again.

This time it was with a left sweep that saw Mam’s two big efforts inspire Staggs into an enormous hit on Salmon – low and hard enough to lift him a metre off the turf – but even then the ex-Raider got the offload away to Luai, who was himself downed by Reyno but still managed to shoot it across to Turuva. Staggs, Riki and Reyno might have piled onto the young winger moments before, but he felt fresh on the park as he nailed a silky grubber here, mercurial enough for both Cobbo and Staggs to miss it before Kotoni finally bumped it dead. 

It had been the most strenuous goal line defence so far from Brisbane, and yet the Panthers were still peaking, as Kenny made ten post-contacts through Carrigan, while dragging Paix along for the ride too, and Cleary sent a bullet ball out to Martin, who offloaded for Edwards to jump over an ankle tap and set his sights on the chalk, in an echo of the right edge combo that had nabbed Penrith their first try. Only a last-ditch tackle from former team mate Capewell stopped him seven metres out, and with that the mountain men started to devolve.

They lost ground on the very next play with a dummy half ball from Critta that cleared Cleary’s head and sailed all the way back to the twenty where Yeo was forced to take it on the bounce. This time, Carrigan wasn’t going to let Kenny make metres, and he had Riki to help him, meaning the Panthers had been locked outside the ten for a couple of tackles. Luke made up for it with a deft dummy half dart, Kenny was frustrated on the last, Cleary extemporized a grubber in goal, Riki bounced it to earth, and had knocked on by the time that he secured it.

This marked a late escalation in the Penrith attack, as they headed right off the scrum, where Cleary was downed by Capewell and Mam, before Luke charged out of dummy half, and Martin required Jensen to gather Cobbo and Farnworth into a three-man pack to repel him from the chalk. Cleary sent it out to Luai, who copped Staggs below and Taupau on top, and all this Panthers’ muscle culminated with a rapid right shift that saw Bizza cross in the corner, at the same moment the whistle blew to signal the footy had been forward from Crichton.

All in all, this last set had been Brisbane’s most concise sequence of defence. With one plosive committed hit after another, they had earned themselves a scrum from a ten in turn, and got stuck into recovery mode, with each carrier making about ten metres – most spectacularly Taupau, who was initially driven back, but then snuck up the left for a bit more position. Even then, Reyno was just shy of halfway by the time he put boot to ball, but he made up for it by striking a beauty over the sideline, and so providing his men with a much-needed breather.

This was one of Reynolds’ classiest boots of the night, given he’d received a fairly slow play-the-ball, and was on the wrong side of the ruck for a left-footed kicker, but any question of a Brisbane consolidation soon dissolved into the messiest period of the game so far. Critta broke a couple of defenders to approach the thirty on the return, and Luke followed with a barnstorming run to bring Penrith into opposition territory on tackle four, but the speed actually got the best of him, and he didn’t play the ball properly for Edwards at the end of it.

Players from both sides were looking exhausted now – Staggs and Edwards were cramping up – and Reyno bought a little extra time by questioning the arrangement of the subsequent scrum. It didn’t get him anywhere though, with Oates putting it down on play one, in Brisbane’s first unforced error of the night, off a tought Cleary-Crichton combo. For the second time in as many minutes, one team was packing the scrum right where the other had received it, as the Panthers looked set to reprise their previous campout on the Broncos’ line.

They were in the red zone midway through the count, where Martin ducked into the defence and popped back the offload for Cleary to embark upon one of his most subliminal runs of the night. Cradling the Steeden in both hands, he dummied from side to side, showing it in one direction and then another, before a Riki-Reyno tackle finally brought him down five metres out on the left. Luke ended it all with a grubber in goal, Mam was forced to bump it dead, Reyno went short with the dropout, and Martin scooped it up ten metres from the line.

Edwards now mirrored Cleary’s crossfield run, albeit not making it quite as far before Haas put him on his back, leaving it for Fish to continue in his slipstream, and win a penalty for a Luai strip. In most other games this would have been the tipping-point for a Penrith landslide, but instead the set started to decline as Luai struggled to decide on a play in the middle of the park, Luke took a crack at the chalk, Cleary took a second crack at the chalk, and Luai finally faked a grubber kick only to overshoot a wide ball twenty back for Staggs to dive on.

Luai’s failed high concept play said everything about this set, and the Broncos capitalised pretty quickly, off the brilliance of Reynolds’ boot. Once again he slotted it over the sideline, but this time he sent up a gutsy Captain’s Challenge to prove that Tago had played at it. With a fresh set in the Panthers’ end of the park, the visitors only took four tackles to set up the little general to slot through the only field goal of the night – the one-pointer that would end up winning them the match, as the final ten minutes of this packed-out fixture now arrived.

With no pressure at all on the kick and an easy angle, Reynolds made it 13-6 without any fuss, adding some showmanship with such casual body language behind the ruck that it almost felt like a deception play when he booted it through. Any chance of the Broncos coasting off this flow came to an abrupt end, however, two plays into the restart, when Capewell hit the ground at the ten, appealed in vain for a Yeo crusher, and trotted off for an HIA, bringing Palasia off the pine for a second time, by which stage the set had well and truly lost its rhythm.

Penrith seized the moment, making good inroads on their next bout of possession, as a sharp dummy and run brought Luke to the cusp of the twenty on tackle four. Carrigan tried to steal it, but to no avail, and Cleary echoed his earlier drift across the ruck, showing it in one hand before popping it out for Luai to dummy left and nearly make it all the way to the chalk. Reynolds and Walters held him up, with some help from Riki, suspending him above the goal in a flashback to Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad’s heroic save on Kalyn Ponga earlier in the evening.

This was monumental defence from the Broncos, especially from Reyno and Walters, two of the smallest blokes on the park, and they hit back with a decent recovery set, bringing the little general to halfway by the time he put boot to ball. Bizza collected it on the bounce, and again Cleary dummied one-handed late in the count, this time shooting it out to Martin, before regathering it a set later to launch a soaring bomb that Arthars nevertheless took clean with Luai tumbling onto his back. The clock was ticking, and still the arm wrestle continued.

Finally, the Panthers got the chance they needed with a second drop from Oates early in the count. Cleary and Luai were the champions here, both of them converging down low to target a separate leg of the Broncos backliner. The hosts swept left immediately, where Brisbane scrambled to clean up Turuva, and Reynolds, the man who had sent up such a powerful challenge earlier, now became the victim of one, as he tried to prove his strip on Turuva hadn’t been a knock-on, the replay cleared showing the footy ricocheting out to Walters’ shin.

At least Brisbane got some breathing-space, although it didn’t help them all that much when Haas stuck a hand in the ruck for his team’s final penalty of the night. Just as the Reyno-Riki-Walters combo had shades of the CNK-Ponga tackle, so Luke now mirrored Wayde Egan’s superb crossover beside the left padding in Wellington, but with even more gymnastic dexterity. Effectively dummying right on the ground, he put down his left knee at a diagonal to the try line, as if aiming to flick it up to Leota on his right, only to pivot abruptly to the left.

Twisting his whole body around that left calf, at the precise nexus between charging and falling, he lunged himself through Jensen and Walters to score. Cleary’s leg was just as strong, booting through the conversion to bring Penrith to a one-point deficit, with three and a half minutes left on the clock. With crisp passing out to the left, Tago was at the forty by tackle two, while ten post-contacts from Yeo put Cleary in kicking range by play four. Yet in the last defining play of the game, he shanked it, sending it both too far and too left of the crossbar.

Cobbo scooped up the Steeden in goal and was dragged back over the line by Luai, who had been ahead of the kick to begin with, as the game wound down to a battle of the halfbacks. Reyno bombed with a minute to go, Cobbo got a hand to it, and the little general kicked for a second time past Cleary, who also got a hand to it, knocking on to grant the visitors the last possession of the night. Brisbane couldn’t have asked for a better way to bounce back from last season’s slump, while Penrith will be anxious for a win against the Bunnies on Thursday.