Round 16
Penrith Panthers 16 l. Brisbane Broncos 24

2007 NRL Telstra Premiership Index [Table] [Draw] [Player Stats] [Club Headlines]

Location: Aus_NZ > National > First Grade Competition: NRL Telstra Premiership

Baby Broncos confine Panthers to last position
Sun July 1, 2007
Brisbane without seven State of Origin representatives have confined Penrith to last position on the table with an impressive 24-16 victory rated by coach Wayne Bennett as one of their finest.

The Broncos raced to an 18-0 lead inside the first 30 minutes and held onto victory despite the Panthers mounting a comeback either side of halftime.

Penrith have been in turmoil on and off the field in recent weeks at all levels within their club and it showed in their performance last night where a serious cleanout is required if they want to get the best out of their vast junior nursery and play to the potential they are capable of.

David Stagg scored in the 3rd minute of play when he ran onto a good pass from stand-in halfback Michael Ennis and than Ennis scored a soft try from the base of the scrum 10m out when the Panthers defence badly misread the situation of play.

Corey Parker crossed over in the 30th minute and converted all three tries for Brisbane to lead 18-0.

Tries to Michael Jennings and Geoff Daniela inside the last five minutes of the first half gave the Panthers hope of a revival and when Tony Puletua scored six minutes into the second half Penrith were all the sudden within two points.

However, the Broncos had a better attitude and application to the game and was rewarded with Darius Boyd scoring in the 55th minute.

No points were scored in the final quarter of the match as the Broncos hung onto their lead and Penrith just couldn't convert any opportunities into points.

Bennett after the match said, "That was pretty special.

"Victories like that live with you for the rest of your career."

The mood was different in the Penrith camp with both coach Matthew Elliott and captain Craig Gower speaking at the press conference.

When asked about the 18 points start being the knockout blow that killed Penrith, Elliott said, "I thought we did a fair job of killing ourselves in that second half as well. We came up with nine pretty poor errors when we'd accumulated some momentum.

"I'm not making excuses - there were some new combinations out there and it would have been nice just to see us execute things on the field the way we know we are capable of. And the opposition, because of the amount of combinations they'd had to change as well, they didn't really throw too much at us - but they stuck to what they obviously planned to do and did it well.

Elliott also went on to say, "I'm a little bit fatigued of being disappointed. What we've got to do is look at 18 points being available to us in the rest of this comp and we've got to get as many of those as we possibly can to retain our sanity, and to our fans. You know it's been a really testing period for our fans and we need to do better for them as well."

Gower when asked about how many of the 18 available competition points Penrith need to make the Finals, the out going halfback said, "I want to win every game. That's why we play football, to win games. And it's disappointing because I know we've got the side there. We'll go back to training tomorrow and we'll keep working hard and the new guys that are there will learn from the experience and it's a good test for us, so we'll dig deep."

And when asked about the last week where he decided to leave the Panthers to take up an offer in France, Gower said, It was a positive week for me. I was looking forward to playing this week. I look forward to playing the rest of the season."

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