BY CURTIS WOODWARD

Let us be honest for a minute. All of us. Come on, take a knee. Let’s all agree that there is no such thing as a perfect NRL draw. Agreed? Good.

The 2017 draw certainly isn’t pretty by any means. You’re not going to please everyone but it makes it tough to defend the NRL when they continually throw landmines into the dark and expect not to trip over them.

There’s a chunk of fans that hate this draw.

Some of the howlers include:

• Brisbane playing Thursday or Friday night footy from rounds 1 to 9
• One Sunday afternoon game for Cronulla in the first 15 rounds
• No western derby at Pepper Stadium between Panthers and Eels
• The unbelievable 6pm Friday timeslot
• Cronulla’s 50th anniversary match against the Roosters denied
• Rabbitohs have four five-day turnarounds

But it could all be much, much worse.

Just imagine, for a moment, being a Penrith fan back in 1999.

Unbelievably the Panthers were forced to play the team coming off the bye on 14 separate occasions and played the team fresh off the bye for 12 straight weeks between rounds 15 and 26!

Poor old Royce Simmons and his team didn’t stand a chance.

They did however finish 10th which is some sort of effort running into the backend of the season.

Heading into round 15 against the Auckland Warriors, Penrith remarkably sat in 4th spot behind Sydney City, Cronulla and Canterbury. At this stage, they’d only played the team off the bye twice. Then the rugby league gods bent them over and spanked them like a baby.

The Panthers downed Auckland 34-20 on a Saturday night at Penrith Park in round 15 with Matt Rieck and David Woods scoring doubles. They then lost five on the trot.

Their worst loss between rounds 15 and 20 came at the hands of competition strugglers South Sydney when they went down 20-0 in front of over 12,000 fans at Penrith.

The damage had been done but not before two of their best wins of the season.

44 days after their last win, the Panthers came alive with a gutsy 14-12 victory over the 2nd place Roosters at the Sydney Football Stadium.

Hope was restored momentarily when the Mountain Men came home the next round and destroyed Manly-Warringah running out 52-10 winners and Ryan Girdler racking up 28 points.

But the weekly battle of facing fresh legs was too much and the Panthers finished the season L,D,W, L.

It was all over.

Before round 15 they were 4th. By the end of the season they were out of contention.

The following season they finished 5th and only a few short years later were crowned NRL premiers.

Good things happen to those who work hard.

So maybe the next time you think about complaining about the 2017 NRL draw, spare a thought for the 1999 Panthers. A team that fought all the way against the most uneven draw you could imagine.

@woodward_curtis