Matt Cameron, the CEO of the Panthers Rugby League, had received a call an hour before the unexpected announcement of James Fisher-Harris’s resignation from Penrith.
The journalist asked, “I heard some news about a prop?”
Cameron answered, “Yeah, we signed young Luron Patea.”
While the reporter wasn’t exactly happy with the news, it was precisely the information that an organization that has perfected the art of staying one step ahead of the game needed to know.
Proactive rather than reactive: making sure that no panic buttons are pressed even in the event that they are taken aback by news or transfers.
James is a significant component of the puzzle that we were not expecting. Not the tail end of it anyhow,” Cameron stated in Bathurst to NRL.com. However, 21-year-old Luron has already made it through the system and is playing reserve grade.
“He’s just the next person on the manufacturing line, coming through.
I’m not sure how we’ll resolve the James case in the long run. Lindsay Smith is prepared to go, Liam Henry is prepared to go, and Moses [Leota] is present.
“We’ve got great players coming through, whether we have to go to market, that’s next week’s conversation, but we’ve done it before.”
The three-peat Panthers will face a big challenge in trying to fill the enormous JFH-shaped hole in their forward pack, but they have a history of overcoming the odds and succeeding.
Penrith have established a dynasty based on their next-man-up philosophy, similar to how they replaced Stephen Crichton with Dally M Rookie of the Year Sunia Turuva, Api Koroisau with a teenage Mitch Kenny, and Matt Burton with the untested Izack Tago.
“In a salary cap world, the reality is we’ve had to lose two players every year since the 2020 grand final but we know the difference is we go in eyes wide open knowing that that’s going to happen,” Cameron said.
“So when players like Jarome, as an example, have an opportunity to grow in someone else’s club, we’ve always got people coming through the bottom end that are ready to go.
“Although losing them is never pleasant, 18 of the last 26 players to depart the team have since received the largest contracts they have ever had. You experience sh**** for a day, but you get past it and grow incredibly pleased of having shared in their path.
“The main group will always face pressure from below if there is a large development system at the bottom end that captures the Western Corridor.”
CEO of the Panthers Group Brian Fletcher laughs at the team that might be made up of former Panthers after their first of three consecutive championships in the grand finals in 2021.
However, the ideal illustration of a club that has implemented an effective strategy is demonstrated by each Tago or Turuva that enters the NRL and contributes to winning another title for the team.
Every year, there is a lot of outside rhetoric that claims we lose players because of the loss of superstars.
“We lost Burton, we lost Koroisau and Kikau in the same year and they said that was the end of us. We lost Crichton and Spencer Leniu now and we’re only two points off the lead so that’s how the system’s built.
“It doesn’t disturb us because we’ve got the system right. We’re undefeated in reserve grade and to win all four comps in 2022, the first time in 113 years, that was just unbelievable. My success as the Group CEO is attributed to being smart enough to put smart people underneath me.”
One of those people is Cameron – Fletcher’s ‘”football guru” – who introduced a restructured pathways program under the blueprint ‘built from within’ after arriving at the club in 2012.
That program placed a big focus on extending their junior talent pool and opening up their backyard to the other side of the mountains to the Central West of New South Wales through a commitment to the region both on and off the field.
Penrith have played games at Bathurst’s Carrington Park since 2014, including their most recent win over Wests Tigers as part of the Telstra Country Series, while the club will also play additional games at Mudgee’s Glen Willow Stadium from 2025.
“In 2012 we came out and did a development camp in Bathurst and there was 160 kids from Group 10,” Cameron said. “When I took some pictures back you could see there was not one Penrith jersey, not one Penrith hat, not one Penrith pair of shorts. I went to the board and said we’ve got to do something about this.
“So if you’re a young country kid and you’re playing representative football, you go into the Western Rams program, which is their version of Harold Matts and SG Ball which Liam Henry and Jack Cole have come through.”
Penrith’s commitment to investing in their own talent pool – be that at the foot of the Blue Mountains or the western tablelands of NSW – has been the lynchpin to an effective production line of quality NRL talent.
Handing Dubbo boy Isaah Yeo his NRL debut 10 years ago and now watching the likes of Henry (from Blayney) and Cole (Orange) continue their development in the NRL, coach Ivan Cleary said ‘you can’t hear enough’ success stories from the bush.
“We always were a development club but it shifted somewhere where only 20 per cent of our NRL squad were from our local juniors or came through our pathways. We wanted to flip that around and get it to more like 80 per cent and only recruit where we needed to,” Cleary told NRL.com.
“We tried to grow as much as we could in terms of our own backyard and we saw there was a real opportunity in the Central West which we like to see as ours too.
“That was a big driver when us as a club made the mandate we wanted to be a development club and only recruit where we needed.
“Since we won all four grades in 2022, it’s also probably made things harder with clubs starting to poach not just our NRL talent but our juniors as well.
“It’s hard to replace people like James Fisher-Harris but these challenges continue to come and all we can control is growing our community, developing our juniors and the Central West continues to be such an important part of that.”
Not only have Penrith impressed in their ability to unveil some of the best talent in the game, but they’ve remained dominant as more and more players are whisked away for representative duties.
The explanation is simple for Cameron: ‘alignment’.
“One of the first things that we did when I sat down with Ivan is said, ok, you’re the head coach and we’re trying to find kids down here to play and coach, but ultimately, we want them to be first graders,” Cameron said.
“So you tell us what you’re looking for in first grade, you tell us how you want them to be coached and then we basically just break that down into segments and then we introduce it step by step.
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