Fast forward six years and the pandemic has passed, the Clearys are the No.1 father-son duo of all time and Penrith are the new kings of daytime football.<\/p>\n
Conventional wisdom should suggest the NRL’s move to a Sunday afternoon preliminary final will play into Brisbane’s hands this weekend.<\/p>\n
Temperatures are tipped to reach 30C at Suncorp Stadium, and fast football in dry conditions should help the Broncos unlock Reece Walsh.<\/p>\n
Penrith are renowned for being a meticulous side that wears teams down with a death by a thousand cuts, but their record in just about any conditions is impressive.<\/p>\n
It’s a reason why they are gunning for a fifth straight premiership over the next fortnight.<\/p>\n
But as evidenced in Sunday’s first-half demolition of Canterbury, the Panthers are particularly lethal in the day.<\/p>\n
Since losing to Canberra on a Sunday afternoon in late July of 2019, Penrith have lost just three of the 38 day matches they have played.<\/p>\n
Cleary’s returns are even greater, having won all 26 of the day matches he has played, missing Penrith’s 2024 losses to the Warriors, North Queensland and Canberra.<\/p>\n
Included in those victories was Penrith’s 32-8 win over Brisbane at Magic Round this year, where Cleary repeated his heroics of the 2023 grand final success.<\/p>\n
“I’ve heard people talk about it in the past few days,” Penrith hooker Mitch Kenny said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“(Daytime football) probably gets the best out of everyone’s attack, so on the other side of the coin it will probably bring the best out of the Broncos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But I feel like playing a 4pm Sunday against the Bulldogs was really good preparation for that. So we’ll be ready.”<\/p>\n
Penrith, for their part, insist their game does not change regardless of conditions. In their mind, it matters little if the sun or the moon is out.<\/p>\n
But there is no question that faster game suits them.<\/p>\n
Since the start of their dynasty in 2020, the Panthers average an extra five points in the day than they do at night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In day matches this year they are more clinical, with their completion rate rising to 85 per cent despite the temptation to spread the ball around more.<\/p>\n
On Sunday afternoon, the Panthers went 20 from 20 as they built a 36-8 lead over Canterbury.<\/p>\n
Crucially, though, the four-time defending premiers’ defence holds just as firm either way, with 14.2 points conceded regardless of day or night since the start of 2020.<\/p>\n
And they miss the same amount of tackles, irrespective of whether or not their opposition feel more free during the day.<\/p>\n
“We probably expect our opposition to move the ball around a bit more in the day, but that’s fine. We can handle that,” Kenny said.<\/p>\n
“We try to play the same way regardless of the weather, the location or the time. We definitely don’t approach it any differently.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fast forward six years and the pandemic has passed, the Clearys are the No.1 father-son duo of all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-163420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}