Four years on, the lessons of the 2020 NRL grand final still drive Penrith ahead of their rematch with Melbourne

Penrith’s survivors of the 2020 grand final remember it well because it was the last time they were afraid.

Not of Melbourne, as good as the Storm were. For all their skill and toughness, they were just another team and the Panthers fear nothing made of flesh and blood.

But they were scared — scared to lose, to let people down, to come so close to a premiership and walk away empty handed.

“In the first grand final I was really nervous, which is normal, but I was scared to fail,” Brian To’o said.

“If I was to talk to my old self I’d say not to be afraid to fail, just relax, embrace the high emotions.”

Moses Leota is 107kg of Samoan steel who runs like he fears nothing, because he doesn’t, and he has won a thousand battles, big and small, in the years since then but it was the same for him on that day four years ago.

 

“I remember being really nervous, scared of failure and what might happen if it doesn’t come off,” Leota said.

“I think if you’re ever in that spot I tell myself to attack it, overcome your fears, attack it head on. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen – all you can do is have a crack.

“Attack everything, take every day and minute as it comes.”

Liam Martin, Penrith’s attack dog of a backrower, struggled to keep things down in the moments before the match. It was all so new to him, and his teammates, and that year was filled with so many firsts.

Midway through the previous season, the Panthers were dead last and eventually limped to finishing 11th. Going from that to such dominance so quickly – they lost just one match in all of 2020 before the grand final – is enough to make anybody’s head spin.

“I’m not one to get sick before a game but I was nearly spewing,” Martin said.

“It was the same in the first final we all played against the Roosters here at home that year, I didn’t know what finals footy was going to be like and I was nervous and worried about it.

“Looking back now it’s funny, it does go to another level but it’s still footy.”

It’s a strange thing, to watch that grand final back now and see the old faces long since moved on and the younger ones who were just getting started.

From the opening whistle, Penrith has the same physicality and ferocity we have come to know but it is loose, wild and uncontrolled, not focused and precise as it would become.

 

They go to Viliame Kikau too much and too early. Cleary throws a wild pass he would never throw today that’s intercepted and taken the length of the field by Suliasi Vunivalu.

Execution is off, bounces don’t go their way and when they leave the field at halftime, down 26-0 with their only fear coming to life, they look like they can’t believe what’s happening to them.

Penrith fought back to only lose by six, but a win never seemed likely. Some of them wept afterwards, their tears lost in the rain.

It’s like seeing a relic from another time, an amateur fight of a future heavyweight champion. It’s long enough ago that James Tamou was still the captain, club stalwart Josh Mansour was holding up a wing and Spencer Leniu, who won the next three titles with them before departing for the Roosters, isn’t in the side at all.

At the start of that season Isaah Yeo was still a second rower, Stephen Crichton was a utility back on the bench and Jarome Luai had played a grand total of one NRL game alongside Nathan Cleary.

From there so many of them have gone on to do extraordinary things and in the grand final they are fresh faced and many of them have brutally short hair cuts, like schoolboys on photo day.

Has Audio Duration: 24 minutes 3 seconds.

Listen 24m

They are by no means old now, but you can feel just how young they used to be.

“You don’t think you’ve aged but then you see those old photos and you think ‘Jesus, it’s catching up with us,'” Martin said.

“Each grand final you get to appreciate it even more.”

In the time since, Penrith has rebuilt the idea of success in its image. Of the 66 men who appeared in the NRL this year who have won a premiership, more than a third of them have done it with the Panthers.

There are no demons left from that first grand final night because they slayed those beasts and after that there was nothing left to fear.

They all watched a replay of it together in the 2021 pre-season and from there they left it behind, banishing any chance of a lasting hangover with a preliminary final victory over Melbourne later that year en route to their first premiership together against South Sydney.

It’s helped propel them to three-straight premierships, and perhaps a fourth, when they can come full circle and beat a remodelled Storm to cap the greatest winning run of modern times and give them a serious claim to being the best team ever, if they don’t have one already.

Now, being afraid is just a thing other people feel about them, and nerves are just a memory of a time before they were great.

 

The 2020 grand final probably never comes up now at Penrith, unless journalists start asking about it.

Only eight of the Penrith players from the match will line up for the rematch on Sunday night.

But the lessons still run deep, even for those who came after, because it was the night that made them into what they are now.

It destroyed them, so they could rebuild themselves anew, harder and stronger and better and truly fearless and they haven’t stopped winning since.

“That was a long time ago. We learned our lessons,” To’o said.

“Once we got that little taste it made us hungrier. Losing that first one was devastating, we never wanted to have that feeling again.

“Everyone dialled in from the next year and the rest speaks for itself, everyone’s been going in the same direction ever since.”