If this were a game of Monopoly, the Penrith Panthers would have used both of their get out of jail free cards.
For the second straight week, they have come-from-behind after trailing by 14 points to win and maintain an unbeaten start to the season.
It was yet again a tale of two halves as the first half saw Penrith’s sloppy ways come to the fore.
With a litany of errors and poor decisions, that allowed their opponents, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, to go ahead 14-0 at the break.
Unable to cope with the the defensive workload in the first half, the Panthers cracked and allowed tries to Cody Walker and Damien Cook.
The trajectory of the game may have been very different had it not been for Greg Inglis leaving the field in the 46th minute due to a head knock.
As they did last week, the Panthers surged home, as tries to Trent Merrin, Waqa Blake and Tyrone Peachey got them over the line.
Despite the similarities to their round 1 win, Penrith captain Peter Wallace knew that if his side could hold onto the ball, they could score points.
”It was a bit of a carbon copy being down at halftime, but we knew if we could get our fair share of ball in the second half we’d give ourselves a shot,” Wallace said.
”We didn’t help ourselves with turnovers and penalties and we obviously can’t do that every week.”
Griffin praised his side for their mental toughness to come-from-behind two weeks in a row.
”The first couple of weeks, being down like that, you don’t want to be but if we were losing and not showing much fight it’d be more of an issue,” Griffin said.
”But the fact that we can get ourselves back into the game, they are a really mentally tough group that can overcome those disappointments early.
”We are confident in our ability and I thought we were always going to get our chance and when we did we took it.”
Although his side have lost their first two games, Rabbitohs coach Anthony Seibold is not about to throw in the towel just yet.
“I don’t think it’s about turning it around or anything like that after two games,” Seibold said.
“We’ve showed glimpses in both games that there is plenty of potential in this group. The disappointing thing is we have lost both and at the end of the day we’ve got to win and that’s what we’ve trained for.
“It’s a tough competition to win games and we’ve got guys who put a tremendous effort in tonight. If we can continue that week to week we’ll win some games.”
Player of the Game:
3. Trent Merrin
2. Damien Cook
- Tyrone Peachey