On Friday night, this particular edition of the Penrith Panthers will begin their last hunt.
Key points:
- Panthers stars Viliame Kikau and Api Koroisau will play their final game at Penrith in Friday night’s finals opener against Parramatta
- Both men played an integral role in Penrith’s rise in recent years
- Kikau will join Canterbury in 2023 while Koroisau is headed to Wests Tigers
That doesn’t mean the Panthers will lose their status as the NRL’s apex predator any time soon. They will still be a good team in 2023, at the very least. They might even be great again. But they won’t be the same as what’s come before.
That’s part of life when you’re as great as Penrith have been over the last three seasons. Once a team becomes good enough, everybody else comes up with a knife looking to carve off a piece for themselves.
The Panthers have lost some smaller pieces already but now Api Koroisau and Viliame Kikau are playing their final game at Penrith in the finals opener against Parramatta, and the Panthers would not be who they are now without these two.
Koroisau arrived first, back in 2015, which is just long ago enough to feel like the old days. Penrith had to beat Newcastle in their final game of the season and Koroisau was gone as quickly as he came, bound for Manly after a single season, before returning four years later a better player and a changed man.
“I think 2015 Api Koroisau was just loose, young, just wanted to be in first grade and was happy to be there, just happy to get paid to play footy. It was my highest priority, but I definitely let too many things get in the way, just young fella stuff,” Koroisau said.
“But now I know when to totally switch on, that the reason I get paid is because I’m a good player and you have to do everything you can to make sure that keeps happening. That’s the difference.”
Koroisau came of age in a very different Penrith team. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)
Koroisau returned to a very different Penrith side to the one he’d left behind. There was young talent, the kind that was hungry for success in the way only young fellas can be.
The dummy half was himself just 27, but that made him part of the old guard. It was sink or swim in the furnace of the west, and Koroisau swam.
“The year before at Manly I was trying really hard to be a leader and play well, but I was in a bit of limbo,” Koroisau said.
“When I got here and saw the culture, saw how they were training, they weren’t mucking around.
“When I came back it was all youngsters, and that drove the change. Players like Fish (James Fisher-Harris) and (Isaah) Yeo lead by example, Nathan (Cleary) busts his arse, they all show how hard they want to work and how hard you have to work to match them.
“They wanted as close to perfection as you could get. You can never get there, but they wanted to get close and I knew if I didn’t jump on that bandwagon I’d be left behind. It changed my game straight away.”
Then everything that has happened to Penrith started to happen, and it hasn’t stopped.
Koroisau became one of the best hookers in rugby league, with his skill at manipulating defenders helping Cleary and Jarome Luai become two of the best halves in the world, and the Panthers started winning and winning and winning.
Kikau was just as big a part of the transformation. He’d always been a gifted attacking player, that was clear long before he arrived at the Panthers in 2016 – the year before, he’s scored 21 tries in 21 games for North Queensland’s Under 20s side.
He was no sleeping giant – in fact, the biggest knock on him before 2020 was that the Panthers relied on him too much, like an Under 8s team who throw it to the big kid as their first, second and last option.
So he thrived in the brave new world, where he was one weapon among many, but he grew into so much more in the club’s run to the premiership last year.
Kikau’s own trademark in the dying stages of the season was not the attack he is best known for but rather throwing his giant frame around in defence with a blatant disregard for his own safety, as well as a willingness to make the second effort time and again.
He could still pull on the silk gloves and find the touch when required but this wasn’t a premiership won on pretty plays.
On the back of efforts like Kikau’s, Penrith’s third premiership was built on inflicting pain and withstanding it until glory was carved out of blood and fire on that last day against South Sydney.
“He gets all the plaudits in attack, but he can change a game defensively,” Panthers skipper Isaah Yeo said.
Defence was Kikau’s trademark during Penrith’s run to the grand final.
“That was huge for us at the end of the finals last year, he was making plays and being a real presence for us and he’s kept that going into this year, and we all feed off that.
“He was very quiet and very big, and he’s grown in stature and confidence. Especially in the last three years, he’s become a real leader, he’s found a voice in his own sense. His actions help drive us as a team.
“He’s only now getting the wraps he’s deserved for a long time.”
After signing with the Bulldogs shortly after the grand final, Kikau has continued with more of the same thunderous form in 2022, as has Koroisau after he signed with the Tigers around the same time.
Both players have produced the best seasons of their NRL careers. The Penrith machine has rolled on and on and on again, and are hot favourites to make it back-to-back titles.
When a team is riding high it’s tempting to think they’ll always be that way. The future stretches out like a glittering path and following it seems so easy and so simple to follow it to more wins and golden days and premierships.
But life doesn’t go that way, and neither does rugby league. There was a point somewhere in the past when every Panthers fan knew this wouldn’t and couldn’t last forever, not with all the same guys.
As sure as one day follows the next, there would be a day when beloved, crucial players like Kikau and Koroisau, would pull on the black jersey for the last time.
Those days are here. That time is now. Friday’s match with the Eels, the only team to really trouble Penrith on a consistent basis over the last three years, might end in victory or defeat but regardless, it’s the beginning of the end for Kikau and Koroisau as Panthers.
When they do leave, the club will not fall in a heap. There will be more premiership crusades to come but worrying if Mitch Kenny can replace Koroisau and if Luke Garner can stand in for Kikau is a problem for another day.
For now, all that matters is what’s right in front of them.
There is only the last hunt of these Panthers, the last good time before a couple more faces and names change forever, the last few more games where Koroisau and Kikau are part of the future and not of the past.
Source:: ABC News
