Big Cat Empire: How Penrith went from giving away tickets to a Sydney superclub

By Andrew Webster

Young Panthers fans watch their idols at a grand final training session this week.Credit: Getty

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In 2013, Penrith recruitment manager Jim Jones stood in front of 80 teenage rugby league players at Carrington Park in Bathurst in the NSW Central Tablelands.

Two years earlier, the Panthers had decided to expand their already enormous junior nursery to take in Western Division, so they held a camp for players aged from 13 to 16.

When the camp concluded, the young players gathered for a photo in front of the scoreboard, which was sponsored by the Panthers’ leagues club in Bathurst.

“Thanks for coming today,” Jones said, before adding: “Now, who follows Penrith?”

Only two players stood up.

“Then one sat down!” Jones roars as he retells the story. “We had one kid!”

Standing alongside Jones that day was Matt Cameron, who joined the club in 2012 to oversee the Panthers’ pathways but is now chief executive of football.

When he returned to Penrith, he enlarged two team photos taken at the camp and asked to meet with the board.

A team photo from a Panthers junior camp in Bathurst in 2013 — only two were Penrith fans.

“We’ve got a club in the main street, but no one likes us out there,” he explained, pointing out that no player was wearing Penrith gear.

Fast-forward a decade and the change in Penrith is reflected in the change of colour in the talented kids who attend their camps in Bathurst.

“I was there last weekend,” Jones says. “Everyone is wearing Panthers gear. Their second team is Penrith.” As Cameron puts it: “Those 16-year-old kids see Penrith as the viable option to be a professional rugby league player.”

In the cranky cut and thrust of rugby league, people struggle to praise rival clubs, especially the successful ones. Panthers players have been branded arrogant and the club has endured constant speculation about how they’ve kept so many of their up-and-coming stars for so long.

“The cap isn’t a difficult thing to manage,” Cameron says. “It is when you attach emotion to it. I don’t coach the team – I worry about the numbers. If you understand you can’t keep all the best players, and especially in a situation when we have good young kids coming through, it’s easy to manage.”

Even the Panthers’ most vocal detractors couldn’t dismiss the incredible reawakening of their club since 2011 when they adopted their “Built from Within” blueprint.

Not that long ago, the Panthers Group – which manages a suite of licensed clubs and the football team – was $112 million in debt. “Ten years ago, we were bleeding money and giving away tickets to watch the footy,” Panthers Group chief executive Brian Fletcher says.

An image taken from the corresponding Panthers camp taken earlier this year.

This season, BlueBet Stadium had an average home attendance of about 19,000 – in a 22,500-seat stadium. More than 10,000 attended a fan day earlier this week ahead of Sunday’s grand final against Brisbane.

It will be Penrith’s fourth consecutive appearance in the decider as they chase their third consecutive premiership. Winning is good for business. “We’ve made $26 million from football in the last four years,” Fletcher says. “The previous decade, we lost $50 million out of running the football department. We’ll make a $7 million to $9 million profit this year in merchandise, membership, game-day sponsorship…”

The Panthers have gone from nearly closing the doors to becoming the most dominant team in Australian sport. You need to look at another code to find a worthy comparison: Richmond won three flags over four seasons between 2017 and 2020 while Hawthorn won three consecutive premierships from 2013 to 2015.

Penrith’s chokehold on the NRL doesn’t come about by happenstance, but a clear strategy to make the most of the abundant talent at their fingertips: 24 junior clubs that produced a whopping 8589 players (7378 male, 1211 female) this year.

Some reckon the smartest thing former general manager of football Phil Gould did during his time at Penrith was appointing Cameron as high-performance manager in 2012.

Cameron would never look at it that way, but he quickly realised when he came to Penrith that the children really were their future.

Phil Gould and Anthony Griffin fell out spectacularly before the coach’s departure from Penrith.

“Gus was bringing in journeyman players who could do what was needed to win first grade games,” Cameron explains. “But Jimmy and I were trying to build a team underneath it. The plan was for those two lines to eventually meet. It came together quicker than we thought it would.”

Cameron performed chiropractic work on the pathways, and it had more to do with coaching than players. He met with coach Ivan Cleary and asked, “If we have a player at 18, what do you want him to look like at 21?”

Instead of fixating on winning junior representative grand finals in the Jersey Flegg (under-21s), SG Ball (under-19s) and Harold Matthews (under-17s) competitions, they became more concerned about using those matches to identify talent.

“We want to give Ivan ready-made first grade players,” Cameron says. “We tell junior coaches we want them to coach the team, but this is a multimillion-dollar business. Our level of coaching for the average 17-year-old player is aligned with what’s going to happen next. We are deeply involved in every aspect in training, selection, recruitment. I feel like we needed to have ownership in the background to produce those players in our system. We’ve got total control.”

Jones has a simpler way of putting it. “Look at our Jersey Flegg team,” he says. “None of them are overweight.”

The veteran recruiter has been unearthing talent for Penrith for more than three decades.

Isaah Yeo was spotted as a 14-year-old and is a prime example of the Panthers system unearthing hidden gems.Credit: Rhett Wyman

While quality players like Nathan Cleary, Jarome Luai and Stephen Crichton will always stand out from an early age playing for their school or club, the true art of recruitment is unearthing the hidden gems.

He spotted lock Isaah Yeo playing at a Catholic Colleges schoolboys tournament in Parkes. While other officials didn’t see much in him when picking teams for selections trials, Jones insisted “the big No.14” take the field. Yeo’s now the game’s premier lock-forward.

Jones also brought Dylan Edwards down from Dorrigo, a speck of a town on the NSW Northern Tablelands. He saw the speed and strength in winger Brian To’o when every other club – and player manager – wouldn’t look beyond his lack of height.

Prop Moses Leota was almost discarded because he was turning up late to training. Then Jones found out the teenager was a full-time brickie’s labourer and found him a less exhausting job.

Of course, the club has made errors along the way. Gould moved on Cleary in 2015 to make way for Anthony Griffin, whom Gould re-signed before sacking him in 2018.

When then-chairman Dave O’Neill enticed Cleary back as coach at the end of that year, it set off an important chain reaction.

Jim Jones, legendary Penrith recruiter.Credit: Brook Mitchell

For starters, it ensured his superstar son, Nathan, would be staying at Penrith for far less money than what he could command on the open market.

Cleary’s return also torpedoed Gould’s negotiations with Wayne Bennett, who might have landed a premiership at Penrith but then likely exited within three years as he did at St George Illawarra, Newcastle and South Sydney.

Penrith were looking for long-term, sustained success and Ivan Cleary was the man who could live and breathe the “built from within” mantra.

“Bennett couldn’t have done a better job, put it that way,” Fletcher laughs, pointing to Cleary’s four grand finals. Cameron puts it this way: “Ivan’s a collaborator”.

Which brings us to the salary cap, a system that supposedly greases the premiership pole by spreading talent evenly across 18 clubs.

Teams race to the top of the pole with haste, usually by buying the best players on the market. Some will reach the top but eventually shed talent and slide back down the pole. Stay near the top too long and fans will suspect you’re using a helicopter.

Penrith identified at the end of the 2019 season that things had change, both culturally and in terms of a cap imbalance in which players like Reagan Campbell-Gillard, Waqa Blake and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak were considered to be on too much money.

With success comes sacrifice. In 2021, Matt Burton and Kurt Capewell left the club. In 2022, it was hooker Api Koroisau and Viliame Kikau. In 2023, it will be Stephen Crichton and Spencer Leniu.

“It would’ve been very easy to keep ‘Kiks’ and ‘Api’ and others, but then you have a ridiculous amount of money tied up in your top 13 players and a bunch of kids filling up the rest,” Cameron says. “The reality is, with the kids coming through at the bottom end because of the development system we have, you can’t keep them all. We’ll spend $3 million this year on development. Why spend that money if you’re not prepared to bring them through?”

There are several ways to consider the success of that system.

Panthers chief executive of rugby league, Matt CameronCredit: Sydney Morning Herald

Of the 18 players who have left the club in the last three years, 13 of them have signed bigger contracts at other clubs.

Some players leave, like Daine Laurie to the Wests Tigers, but come back as he has for significantly less money.

Some players aren’t loved by another club, like Capewell at Cronulla, but he signed with Penrith, became an infinitely better player and then received a massive payday from the Broncos. He will line up against his former teammates in the grand final.

Some players get offered huge sums, like winger Sunia Turuva did to join the Dolphins, but would rather stay and win premierships on the wing.

And many players go the Bulldogs, like Crichton will next year, but talented outside backs like Jesse McLean are next on the production line, ready to step into the void.

But nothing indicates success like those premiership rings, baby, so consider this: 12 of Penrith’s starting 13 players on Sunday made their debuts at the club. The only one who didn’t is back-rower Scott Sorensen.

“Without sounding arrogant, it’s the patience of the board and administration that has made this work,” Cameron says. “I can see how, for some clubs, it’s about getting the next win, but if you look at our first grade team now it’s the result of planning and good development but also senior administrators being patient enough to see what we were trying to do. We have to hold our nerve here. We’re lucky we have a consistent board and senior management that’s supported everything we’ve done.”

Cameron admits it’s getting harder to solve the riddle, though. Clubs aren’t just after big-name players coming off contract but younger players down the line.

Nevertheless, the Panthers are still building their Big Cat Empire.

Nathan and Ivan Cleary are secured to the end 2027 while Yeo, Leota, Edwards, Liam Martin and James Fisher-Harris are all signed long-term. When he finds a new manager, five-eighth Jarome Luai is expected to extend.

After surviving tough days when Penrith looked like it might have to close the doors, Jones isn’t ready to go to bed.

“A three-peat would be nice,” he smiles. “We might even get a free beer.”

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