Not a single Penrith Grand Final winner was present in the team’s first public game of the year. Instead, this was an opportunity for the franchise’s enormous depth to make a case for themselves, as well as a chance for new recruit Isaiah Papali’i to don the Panthers jersey for the first time. He was clearly raring to go and all eyes will be on him at the foot of the mountains as he attempts to reclaim his form from 2002, when he won Dally M Second Rower of the Year at Parramatta, after a couple of pretty lacklustre seasons with the Wests Tigers.

Many of the Grand Final winners were in place to provide the boys with a tunnel out to the park, saving an especially big smile for Sione Fonua, who was returning to the paddock after three years away from the game, during which time he reached a whopping 130kg. His performance tonight suggested that he may still have some first grade potential in him. There was an exciting sense of novelty around this fresh crop of Panthers, especially since World Club Champion commitments precluded the team participating in last year’s Challenge.

On the other side of the Steeden, the Raiders had also tapped into the Parra pipeline, with up-and-coming halfback Ethan Sanders making his debut in the green machine. He’s a sure prospect for long-term seven, and his involvement this evening, including his role in the opening try, suggested that Jamal Fogarty could be under pressure to maintain his spot as the year progresses. Owen Pattie also made a great case for himself as starting hooker with two tries in the second stanza off the bench, a critical moment in Canberra’s eventual victory.

Add to that a try from second-rower Noah Martin in the back forty, speed and bravery under the high ball from up-and-coming fullback Chevy Stewart, and a solid hit from ex-Warrington forward Matty Nicholson, and Canberra’s recruits and young guns promise to add some staunch depth to their 2025 season. Heavy rain was belting down for long sections of the match but it didn’t dampen the mood for either side, although the spottier conditions for ball handling and the relative inexperience of the game meant that most tries came off kicks.

Penrith enjoyed most of the position and made fewer errors in the first half but really struggled to make a dent on the board. 27 minutes in, after an accumulation of Panthers territory off a dangerous shot from Sanders and a linebreak from Casey McLean, Sanders took advantage of an Asu Kepaoa mistake, and more than made up for his own error, with the single best piece of footwork all game. Dummying in the red zone to dispose of Schneider, he straightened off the left boot and sent the Penrith halfback reeling into Simi Sasagi.

Sasagi turned out to be the beneficiary of the most beautiful offload of the night too, as Sanders came down hard with two defenders around his waist and yet still managed to twist his body so that he could lob out the second phase with the right hand. The wave of Penrith’s pack defence, led by Schneider’s residual run, had already started to tumble into Sasagi, but the New Zealander read the round-the-corner pass beautifully, and never gave up on the play, withstanding Daine Laurie on top and David Fale below to slam the Steeden to ground.

Nevertheless Fale got his revenge by scoring a try through Sanders five minutes from the sheds while Laurie, his fellow tackler, set it all up with a boot to the right corner. Jesse McLean was in line to receive it, Stewart got there first but knocked on, and a Nicholson ruck error gave the Panthers the platform they needed for a gorgeous right sweep that saw Schneider go short and Laurie go long for Fale to dummy right, tuck the footy into his chest, bump off a couple of exhausted Canberra defenders and come down with Sanders on his back.

It was a poetic riposte to the first try and put the Panthers 4-6 at the break after Jack Cole failed to nab the conversion. The Raiders needed to hit back with a big statement, and Pattie delivered with two tries in the first ten minutes back. His first was subtle and small-scale, a dart through the line beside the left padding at the 45^th minute, where he managed to elude the brunt of Mavrik Geyer on top, along with a couple of other scrambling Penrith defenders. Adam Cook now had kicking duties, booting through the two to make it a 12-4 margin.

The next try was considerably more expansive, if only because it came at the end of one of Canberra’s most searching sets of the game. Cook nailed the kick, flicking it off the left side of his boot to the right edge of the park, where Casey McLean missed it, Manaia Watere didn’t manage to plant it down, and Pattie surged in to cross over for a double. With this double the visitors had won the match, although the next generation of Panthers would come pretty close to matching them, both in pointscoring and panache, during the final quarter tonight.

Before that happened, though, the green machine would cap off their evening with their most memorable four-pointer. So many of the game’s big plays had come off kicks to the right edge that the sheer fact of Schneider chipping it from short range at the hour mark seemed like a good indication that the next Penrith try might be in sight. Instead, Ethan Alaia scooped it up from right under Geyer’s nose and was almost over halfway by the time that Luke Sommerton and Preston Riki brought him down. Canberra had to build something special with that.

Noah Martin was the man to deliver it, in the most daring individual play of the match. Receiving the footy from Keahn Skipps at the very moment he made contact with Zack Lamont, he mercurially changed his body angle to get on the outside of the Penrith 18, tucked it under his arm, eluded two ankle taps and smashed over for the final Canberra try of the contest, Skipps bookending it by sailing through the final conversion. In its combination of silky vision and brute strength, Martin’s charge felt like a full stop on the game as a whole.

While the Panthers would go on to score two more tries, neither of them could quite match the height of Canberra’s last twenty minutes. As the final ten minutes approached, Trent Toelau continued to showcase his versatility with a sharp kick from lock to the left, where some miscommunication from Alaia and Jensen Taumoepeau allowed Sam Lane to cross. Three minutes after that, Toelau stepped up again with a short ball for Zac Lipowicz to dance through a Mark Tuialii ankle tap and put Zack Lamont across in the corner for the final try.

All in all, then, it was a real novelty to see the second and third generation Panthers players taking the field. It’ll be a totally different team that meets the Sharks in Vegas in early March but seeing some park footy on this smaller scale was a great prelude to that enormous cauldron. Meanwhile Canberra can feel pretty confident in some of their young guns, with Sanders set to be one of the canniest purchases of the 2025 season. It may well be the second half double comes to be seen as a pivotal moment in Pattie’s evolution at hooker too.