The Penrith Panthers shattered their own record and kept the Wests Tigers scoreless in a 68-0 demolition at CommBank Stadium, the biggest win in club history. It was a result that moved fast from lopsided to historic, with Penrith finishing the night on a margin no team in the club’s past had managed before.
The scale of it matters because the Panthers’ previous benchmark was a 72-12 win over the Sea Eagles in 2004, a 60-point margin that has now been eclipsed. The 68-0 result was also the fifth-biggest win in NRL/NSWRL history, a line that underlines how completely the Tigers were overrun from the opening stages.
Casey McLean had a more complicated night. He left with an ankle injury and was later described by the club as having an ankle impingement, leaving a cloud over a player who was expected to head into Origin camp this week when Laurie Daley names his side for Game II. McLean was seen in good spirits on the field after the game, but that did little to ease the concern around whether he will be fit in time.
On the field, Penrith turned the match into a procession. Nathan Cleary scored 22 points, including a try and nine conversions, while Tom Jenkins crossed twice, made five line breaks and ran for 276 metres. Brian To’o also scored two tries, and the Panthers finished with 16 line breaks to the Tigers’ one. The Tigers, by contrast, missed 52 tackles and did not breach Penrith’s 20-metre zone until the 47th minute.
The numbers told the story of a side that could not keep pace. The Tigers completed only three of their six sets in the opening quarter, and at half time they trailed 36-0 after Luke Keary delivered a pointed comment about Jarome Luai, saying he had to stand up and had not brought success to the team. It was the sort of blunt assessment that usually comes only when the game itself has already slipped away.
There was more disruption for the visitors as Jock Madden and Royce Hunt did not finish the match because of elbow and pectoral injuries, while Terrell May still made 48 tackles in a losing cause. Penrith, meanwhile, got the kind of statement win that travels beyond one round and one scoreline, but McLean’s ankle issue may be the detail that lingers longest this week. If Daley is forced to name his NSW side without him, a historic Panthers night will also have left a selection headache behind.
