How do you solve a problem like the Panthers?

For all the talk that this is the deepest NRL finals series in years, the bookies very much disagree. It’s Penrith’s to lose. You can get $2.25 on them and the next best available is $7 on Parra.

I come from a long line of bookmakers back in the old country, and my great-grandfather didn’t get to live in the biggest house in west Belfast by losing cash to punters. I believe the bookies.

It’s up to the other seven sides in the finals to figure Penrith out, and post-Covid, that has proven easier said than done. Since the resumption of play and the introduction of the six-again rule, their record stands at a ridiculous 59-1-10.

You can immediately discount six of those defeats, too, as they were either without significant players (via both resting and Origin), plus the recent clash with Parramatta in which they played 60 minutes a man down.

So how do you solve a problem like the Panthers? Regular Roar readers might be aware I have occasionally rolled out a How X can beat Y column this year, and, whisper it quietly, #mikestradamus is 4-0 – including the Eels’ win at Penrith in May.

Where 59 NRL teams have failed, I shall succeed. Well, theoretically at least. They have to still play the bloody game, while I will instead munch free KFC in the media box.

When a team loses four real games in two years, it’s hard to build a sample size of defeats to look at. Nevertheless, it’s possible to build examples of when the Panthers have lost, even when, obviously, sometimes they didn’t lose.

That sounds silly, I know, but there’s two key tactical concepts I have to introduce that will help explain it. There’s variance, and how that works in sporting contexts, and what I call “system wins/losses/draws”.

Variance is vital in the context of the Panthers, because they are the best squad and have the best system, which is why they win so much.

Variance is the potential for luck/chaos/refereeing to impact the result. Better teams win more because they can control key elements of the game and reduce variance, which is not their friend as it gives underdogs a chance.

Luck is 50/50, but if you are favourites to win, your chances are better than 50/50 so you want to play in a style that benefits you.

Conversely, if you are an underdog, you want to play in a way that negates the talent or organisational disparity and introduces variance into proceedings.

The second part plays into the first. A ‘system win/loss/draw’ is about who won the tactical battle, even if that might not play out in terms of winning the match.

Sometimes this is obvious – if you win the match 50-0, suffice to say you also had a system win – but sometimes you get a system win and a result loss, or a system loss where you jag the result, or a system draw where neither team was conclusively better than the other.

The last of those is the most interesting, because a system draw – of which there are a lot in rugby league, and even more in finals – is where variance comes into play. Your tactics create the conditions for luck to go your way.

Take Parramatta’s recent run. They had a conclusive system loss to Souths, where the Bunnies’ expansive style won out over their power game, plus a huge system win over Brisbane, where they ran right over them through the middle.

Against Melbourne, however, you could argue a system draw – it was three tries apiece – but got they result because of variance factors, such as when they scored their points (and thus created scoreboard pressure), differences in goalkicking (and the penalty goals they chose to take because of the match situation).

With these two ideas in our heads, there’s more than a few examples where Penrith have been less than dominant.

Alongside the Round 9 win for Parramatta, there was also a Round 2 system draw with St George Illawarra. To jag your memory, they split three tries each but the Dragons had multiple sin bins and eventually lost on conversions. But for a charge down try and a couple of penalty goals, the Dragons win. Tactically, they turned a game they lose 9 times out of 10 into something much closer.

There was recent win over Souths, which I would argue was a system victory for the Bunnies, who caused untold issues for the Panthers’ usually excellent defence. Again, Penrith got the result in the end, because they’re great and will do that.

You could also throw in the win over the Titans where Penrith decisively system lost the first half but came back, and the Queensland win in Origin 1, where the Maroons tactically defeated the superpowered Penrith attacking system operated by the Blues.

I analysed these games and came up with a few pointers on where teams can take on the Panthers system and either win or at least draw and introduce variance that can create a win.

This comes with my usual caveat that if you don’t run hard, scramble well and avoid the usual yardage errors and penalties – the things any team can control – then it doesn’t matter how good your system is.

Assuming that, in finals, every team is good, then we can get down to the weaknesses of Ivan Cleary’s well-oiled machine.

Stop the lock

Everyone and their dog knows that Isaah Yeo is the man who makes the Panthers tick offensively. The ball-playing lock (BPL) allows halves to stand wider and back-rowers to load up on runs at defensive seams, but it only works if the lock is a credible run threat.

In this sense, there are a few ways to skin the cat when it comes to dealing with a BPL, especially the best one in the game.

Queensland managed one of them in Game 1 of Origin, by using Dane Gagai and Val Holmes to shoot the line and remove passing options.

That can work, but as seen in Game 2, it’s hard to maintain as the kick behind the pressing centre is always on and it takes a lot of defensive cohesion and line speed to pull off.

The Titans managed this superbly, too, and added another layer. Their outside backs are awful at tackling, but didn’t have to make any as the Panthers were forced back into the middle or halted in their tracks – just like Will Smith is doing on Nathan Cleary in the screengrab above.

The second part was that they put in huge inside pressure that often resulted in the lock taking contact rather than getting the ball along the line.

Yeo averages a pass-per-run ratio of 1.41 across the season, but was 0.66 in the first half. In the second, when Penrith took control, it was closer to three. For 40 minutes, they stopped the system.

Two of Penrith’s three tries came off a kick in behind the onrushing defence, because the Panthers are good and sussed it out. (The Titans try to give them a lead, incidentally, was once of the most chaotic of the year because variance.)

The other option, which is what Parramatta did in May and what the Dragons did before that, is to let him pass but remove the run.

Yeo averages just shy of five line engaged runs per game, but he was down at two against St George Illawarra and zero against the Eels. The Roosters, twice, also severely blunted his effectiveness.

The trick here is forcing the pass along the line and allowing your own defence to slide. This often goes hand in hand with line speed and winning collisions: if your line speed is good enough, you get to force the hand of the lock who has to choose between taking contract and shifting the ball.

If you can stop the play one and play two momentum, you remove the space in which the BPL can operate. You turn them from Isaah Yeo into Jake Trbojevic, a ball-mover rather than a ball-player.

It’s one thing to say it and another to do it. But if a team can sufficiently pressure the Panthers, it can deeply unnerve their attacking fundamentals.

Break the transition

We touched on play one and two there, and they are key. The Panthers own the transition, the crucial phase between the end of an opponent’s set and the start of their own.

They move from defence to attack via their hard-running wingers and Dylan Edwards, the best metre-eating fullback in the NRL. But it needn’t always be so.

Parramatta have proven extensively that it is possible to negate the set starts of Edwards, Brian To’o and Taylan May through a combination of tackling technique and clever kicking.

In May, Parramatta didn’t just tackle the back three: they held them up, stopped them still and then either turned them around or pushed them onto their back. Watch them do it to Edwards and May in succession here: held, turned, downed.

To’o and May are meant to find the floor and win the ruck, but Parra repeatedly stopped them from doing so. On the back of that, they were able to force the forwards into taking more hit ups and sap energy from them that they were able to cash in later with ball in hand.

The purpose of the back three running metres theory that has fuelled the Panthers’ rise is that they take the bulk of the hard carries, allowing their middles to load up in defence and create oppressive line speed.

If you can stop the backs, then you can make the forwards have to take more hard carries, and thus tire them out later down the track.

Parra also used Mitchell Moses to trouble Edwards through his long kicks, which are both (obviously) long, but also had a lot of hang time that gave the chasers time to get into gear.

He kicked for a frankly ridiculous 777m, the most that any player has kicked in any game this year. Moses dictated terms to the back three.

Penrith average 1806m per game, but got more than 200 fewer against the Dragons and Titans, and even the Eels – who are rubbish in terms of metres conceded, despite how good the rest of their side is – kept them to less than their usual mark.  

Parra kicked long, chased hard and tackled slow. They’d do well to do that again, and everyone else should take notes.

Change the conversation – and tire them out

Penrith are the best at a lot of things. Notably, they have the most ball possession and the most patience in attack: they back themselves to have more of the footy and through that generate enough pressure to score points.

The link between ball possession and winning has been done to death, and it’s quite obvious. The more you have of the footy the more chances you get to do something with it.

In all three of our system loss/system draw examples, the Panthers have averaged around 46% of possession, which is a huge drop from their regular 52%. Their line speed is their biggest defensive weapon but it is predicated on having the energy to constantly run up hard.

So how do you stop Penrith getting the ball?

Well, there’s a couple of ways. Firstly, you don’t make errors yourself and gift them it, but let’s assume that everyone knows that.

As mentioned above, you can kick long well to blunt the transition. But you can also think out of the box. As the saying goes: if someone is saying something you don’t like, you change the conversation.

Queensland did this to NSW by kicking early in the tackle count, to start the Blues on their terms. You could also kick off the island altogether to lessen the effect of repeat bouts of energy expenditure. Slow the game down massively. If Penrith think they’ll win a long grind against anyone, don’t engage in one.

You can also make your sets longer. That can mean more tackles via second phase, and Parra proved that exceptionally well by winning the offload count 18-2 in their Round 9 victory. They challenged the Panthers to make more repeat effort bouts and eventually found them wanting.

It can also mean in terms of distance covered: Souths performed worse in pretty much every statistical category in their game in Round 23, but could and should have won – on that occasion, Penrith got the variance.

They repeatedly challenged the fearsome Panthers line speed by moving them from side to side and, eventually, backwards. When the line came, they passed around it, winning six line breaks to one in the first half.

Even though they made more errors and completed much lower, they had far more of the ball and Penrith couldn’t keep up defensively, conceding late in the half as they tired and then late again in the second.

It’s unlikely that any team that goes up against the Panthers is going to beat them by playing the same type of game. But there are ways.

Though, as Mike Tyson famously said: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And Penrith are better punchers than most.