You will go for many years to see a team play worse than the 2007 Penrith Panthers.
The worst team I have ever seen in my lifetime was the Western Suburbs Magpies of the late 1990’s. To be fair to the Magpies, the club didn’t have much money and just didn’t have the cattle to be a top club. Eventually they merged with Balmain and and formed the Wests Tigers.
Penrith meanwhile have 9 current or former Test players in their lineup, they are backed by a League club that is a limitless cash supply and they see over the biggest junior League in the entire world!
This means that its not a lack of resources that are holding Penrith back, its poor management.
It always starts from the top down.
The club has stuck by players for years who have shown they are either inconsistent, involved in to many disgraceful off field problems or simply not up to the mark and can not perform in first grade.
The club talks up its work in promoting the game in Penrith, but as someone that lives in the area I can tell you this is a load of crap. Attend any function at which Penrith players are promised and you will find that the players will be late (If they turn up at all) and the only ones actually allowed on such out of club promotional work are mostly Premier League players no one has ever heard of!
The club went out looking for a new coach after sacking a Premiership winner in John Lang. They signed Matthew Elliott to a three year deal despite his dreadful results at Canberra.
Keep in mind Elliott resided over the downfall of the Raiders. No one wanted to sign for the club. Any player that could left the club. Since moving on the Raiders have quickly started to bounce back while the Panthers have gone from bad to worse.
This cant be put down to a coincidence.
On the field the players lack guts. They play stupid. They are panicky idiots.
Only Luke Rooney, Rhys Wesser and Michael Gordon can honestly put their hand up and say they play hard.
I can tell you as a Panthers fan I have had a gut full of watching my clubs being a complete joke. A waste of an NRL license.
There needs to be massive changes at the club, starting with the top end management. The people running the club at ever level are not good enough. They can not in any way get the results they should be getting with the resources at hand.
There is now not a single other club in the entire competition that you could say is run worse than Penrith.
Its time for major changes. Its time to bring people in from outside of the area to make the club successful again.
