The Father of English History, Saint Bede, once scribed that “Rome will exist as long as the Colosseum does; when the Colosseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world.”
Of course, the Colosseum – Rome’s heartbeat for thousands of years – still barely stands.
But where does that leave our nomadic four-time championship Penrith Panthers in 2025?
It was hard enough beating the imperious Panthers in the last four years – let alone having to enter a jam-packed Penrith Stadium and conquer the mountain men as “Emperor Ivan” sat high above the arena.
With the old stadium now out of action and being knocked down for redevelopment, the Panthers walked into CommBank Stadium last weekend, their four premiership trophies tucked under their arms, to begin a new era.
Nobody gave the battling Sydney Roosters a hope in hell after being decimated, devastated, and annihilated by the white-hot Broncos in round one.
What followed was one of the all-time upsets.
The Roosters floored the champs with a heavy right cross.
“I’ve moved on from last week,” Coach Cleary told reporters on Tuesday.
“I’d rather not talk about it.
“I said what I said after the game.”
Penrith must now head to Melbourne to play the 1st place Storm at the risk of rare back-to-back losses.
Since winning the first of their four-straight titles in 2021, the Panthers have lost two-straight matches on just three occasions.
Seven of those losses came away from home.
The only team to beat the Panthers in back-to-back losses was in fact the storm in round 24 last year.
A week later – the Raiders upset Penrith down in Canberra.
If the champs were to go down again this week, it would also be the earliest in any of the last five years that they’ve dropped back-to-back games.
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But perhaps most alarming for the Panthers is how easily they have leaked points in both their Las Vegas victory against Cronulla and last week against the Tricolours.
Despite the victory against the Sharks – the big black cats conceded 22.
Last week it was 38 against a Roosters outfit severely down on troops.
The coach said post-match that the “game was lost before we got here.”
“We never got here thinking we were going to be perfect and that’s never something we talk about.
“Even in the first round, we weren’t perfect at all.
“But we just weren’t, there’s enough players tonight that weren’t anywhere near their best and collectively we just didn’t play anywhere near what we’d like to so that should have been better than what we tossed up tonight.”
Our champions have lost their coliseum.
Their next challenge is the Victorian capital and the grand final re-match.
Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero once said: “The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.”
A fifth premiership in 2025 would be their greatest achievement.