“The critics said it wasn’t good for the game to have a rugby league team that was constantly winning. Well, we proved them wrong.”
These are the words of a champion.
But they’re not from Penrith’s Nathan Cleary, his dad Ivan or Isaah Yeo.
They are from one of the iconic leaders of St George’s eleven-straight premierships, between 1956 and 1966, Immortal and one-time St George captain-coach, Norm Provan.
“Fans loved to watch St George play,” Provan wrote for Ian Collis and Alan Whiticker’s ‘St George’ – Eleven Golden Years of the Dragons’ book in 2013.
“St George always had a tremendous following in other districts in Sydney, country NSW, and stretching all the way up into Queensland.”
Prior to the St George club going on their historic premiership run, three other clubs claimed pieces of rugby league history, but nobody ever thought a team could dominate for as long as the Red V did.
South Sydney won three-straight between 1953 and 1955, Dally Messenger’s Easts did the same in the early days of NSWRL and the club did it again in the 1930s and Balmain (1915-1917).
Incredibly, Benny Wearing and Souths were so dominant in 1925 that the NSWRL wrapped up the season early and handed the shield to the men from Redfern.
They would go on to win the premiership in the following four seasons.
You could imagine punters back in the day scoffing at anyone ever topping the Rabbitohs winning five on the run.
Then came the fire-breathing Dragons and over a decade of domination.
There was nothing in Sydney at that time like the St George Dragons.
Most hard-working fans living in the region, places like Mortdale, Carlton and Allawah rarely got to see their own team in action as the Dragons spent most of their time at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the round’s “match of the day”.
Only on the odd occasion, when St George were playing a side at the bottom of the table, would they get to walk down the road and see them play at Kogarah Oval.
This is where we pick up the story.
Because the Panthers, in 2024, have surpassed everything and anything someone could imagine for a modern-day club in the National Rugby League.
Back in their time, St George club became lore – more than a footy team – they became an indestructible superhero and it was long before silly greenscreen CGI Hollywood “blockbusters”.
The Red V.
St George had an imperious aura.
Rival scouts and club officials would show up to junior games and you couldn’t pick them in the crowd. Frank Facer and his colleagues would walk through the gates, and everyone knew the Dragons were there.
Perfectly dressed and finished off with the famous bright red, club jacket.
Instead of celebrating their triumphs, and at the urging of Facer and the club, players were expected to spread the club’s name far and wide. At the end of any given season, the team would go on post-premiership ‘promotions’ including a tour of Western Australia at the end of the 1966.
Penrith’s logo, the mighty and powerful black panther, in 2024, is just as powerful.
The names – in this time and to their fans – are too.
Just like Gasnier, Langlands, Raper and Provan before them – long before they were tagged for Immortality.
Cleary.
Yeo.
Martin.
Edwards.
To’o.
Someone leaves.
Next season the Panthers lose Jarome Luai and Sunia Turuva to Wests Tigers and James Fisher-Harris to the Warriors.
Someone else steps up.
They… those out there… might think the Panthers winning the premiership again is “boring”.
Those wouldn’t understand the history they are living in.
For this is a story we can’t quite compute right now.
In ’66, St George clinched their 11th without Provan (retired) and Gasnier (injured).
For the Panthers to win it all again next season, they’ll do it sans Luai, Fisher-Harris and livewire flyer Sunia Turuva.
All those NRL years, since 1998, we were told it was impossible to win back-to-back premierships.
It’s hard enough to win one.
We had an incredible run where Manly-Warringah smashed Melbourne 40-0, Wayne Bennett and the Dragons, Melbourne’s premiership comeback after being smashed in the face by the NRL for salary cap cheating.
Russell Crowe’s South Sydney and Sam Burgess’ broken jaw.
The Bondi boys and Sonny Bill Williams.
The 2015 finale and golden point between North Queensland and the Broncos.
Paul Gallen and Andrew Ettingshausen embracing as the porchlight was turned off in the Shire in 2016.
Since then, yeah, we’ve had different combinations of the same clubs rolling into the grand final at Accor Stadium and while there is an argument that something is wrong, because we are seeing the likes of Panthers, Storm and Roosters in the last game of the season consistently, it says even more about the Panthers and the fact they’ve now won four-straight against the very best opposition.
You can only beat what is in front of you.
And we are talking about the top teams in those given seasons challenging for the greatest prize we have.
The Panthers just keep on winning.
It’s almost impossible to ever compare teams from other eras.
We thought we never really could.
But the Panthers winning their fourth-straight grand final on Sunday in modern rugby league changes everything.
This is what Penrith have achieved.
What they have done now, in 2024, earns them the right to enter a conversation with the 1956-1966 Dragons.
A conversation we thought we’d never have.
Yet here we are.
At the time of St George winning eleven-straight, players had to live in the local district.
Even when the Saints signed English Internationals or Kangaroos representatives from the bush or Sydney or from the Brisbane Rugby League, sometimes they spent an entire season in reserve grade, before they got the right to play first grade for St George.
Penrith have now won four premierships straight.
Nobody is trying to leave St Marys, Blacktown or Minchinbury.
On any given day, a local in Sydney’s west is a chance of seeing their beloved players walking down the street, at a café or walking their dog.
Much the same way you may have seen Billy Smith, Langlands, Gasnier or Provan during the week around the St George region back in the 1950s and 1960s.
Kings of their times – all in your own backyard.
St George’s legendary hooker Ian Walsh once celebrated a grand final win in the sheds of the SCG by drinking champagne from his old leather boot – an old-school “shoey”.
Today, champagne from the boot has been replaced by boomboxes and ski goggles.
The argument for the Panthers is the salary cap and the game’s great “equalisation”.
Not even Wayne Bennett’s Brisbane Broncos juggernaut of the 1990s could manage more than back-to-back premierships.
Neither could some of the game’s modern greats – Andrew Johns, Johnathan Thurston and Brad Fittler to name a few.
For the longest time, in the world’s most competitive, cut-throat sport, it was thought impossible to see any side winning the NRL back-to-back.
The Roosters managed just one premiership between 2000 and 2004.
Ignoring the salary cap scandal, Melbourne lost the decider in 2006, won it easily in 2007 and were then flogged 40-0 by Manly in 2008 before beating Parramatta the following season.
Great organisations not only leave legacies – they spread them too.
Kevin Ryan, born in Ipswich, was a rugby union international who narrowly missed out on making it to the Rome Olympics in 1960 as an amateur boxer.
After spending seven seasons at the Dragons, every one of his 106 games as tough as the last, Ryan agreed to a contract as captain-coach of the Canterbury-Bankstown Berries and left St George at the end of ’66.
It was Ryan, the great St George hitman, famous for buckling runners with his fearsome chest-first assaults, that came back to conquer the streak when his Canterbury side defeated the Dragons 12-11 in a semi-final at the SCG.
Facer and others wept in the stands.
Ryan walked into the St George dressing room and consoled his old teammates.
The Penrith nursery is boundless, and their four-straight journey isn’t just about the players still in the big black, or pink, jersey.
Stephen Crichton, Matt Burton and Viliame Kikau have helped the Bulldogs become a finals team again and will be even better in 2025.
Api Koroisau is carrying Wests Tigers on his shoulders.
Others have become the stars they are today because of Penrith.
Spencer Leniu at the Roosters.
Kurt Capewell at the Broncos and the Warriors.
Throw in Warriors head coach Andrew Webster.
They continue to spew talent out of their system.
It will never spot.
“No one will ever do what the St George team in the ‘50s and ‘60s did,” Andrew Johns said in Channel Nine commentary on Sunday night.
“But I don’t think we will ever see this again in the modern NRL era with a salary cap and how hard it is to keep a squad together with success.”
After defeating the Storm, outgoing Penrith five-eighth Luai told Fox League, “no one is going to do this again.”
Let that sink in.
Johns.
Immortal.
Luai.
Four-time premiership-winner.
If guys like Johns and Luai are saying this at four – what if they win five?
Or six?
Seven?
The question now is how many more premierships do the Panthers, in this modern world, need for them to be on par or greater than the 1956-1966 St George Dragons?
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