Penrith Panthers coach Ivan Cleary has conceded he doesn’t even know if his young side has the mental toughness to succeed in the finals despite clinching their 12th straight win against Brisbane on Thursday night.

It almost guarantees them the minor premiership but they didn’t have it all their own way at Suncorp with the hapless Broncos showing plenty of grit and determination.

“I guess we’ll find out [about mental toughness],” Cleary said.

“We will go into the finals with that question mark because we don’t necessarily have a lot of experience.

“But we didn’t have a lot of experience even playing NRL games, and we managed to do that okay.”

Cleary even half-jokingly tossed in the hurdles of the coronavirus that has rocked all sports.

“And we had no experience for the COVID break and no experience with new ruck interpretations, so, I don’t know, who knows? We’ll see.”