{"id":519646,"date":"2026-03-05T05:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T05:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519646\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T05:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T05:47:10","slug":"dylan-edwards-worried-about-panthers-not-revenge-ahead-of-broncos-nrl-showdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519646\/","title":{"rendered":"Dylan Edwards worried about Panthers\u2014not revenge\u2014ahead of Broncos NRL showdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time in five years Penrith is about to enter an NRL season as the hunters, not the hunted.<\/p>\n

While star Panthers<\/a> fullback Dylan Edwards is excited about having first crack at the team that took their NRL title\u2014and knocked them out of the 2025 premiership race\u2014he says the squad is far more concerned with getting their 2026 campaign off to a strong start than exacting revenge on the Broncos<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t finish (2025) the way we wanted, so that obviously creates hunger, but it\u2019s a new campaign and we\u2019re going up there to put our game on\u2014we\u2019ll be worrying more about us than worrying about the Broncos,\u201d he told the media<\/a> before Penrith flew to Brisbane ahead of Friday night\u2019s clash.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good challenge any time you go up to Suncorp and face the Broncos, no matter where they finish, but they\u2019re the reigning premiers so what better time to test yourself than Round 1?\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0NRL team lists 2026 – Confirmed teams for Round 1<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018We let things slip a bit\u2019<\/p>\n

Asked if coach Ivan Cleary had used last year\u2019s NRL preliminary final loss to Brisbane as motivation for the Round 1 clash, Edwards admitted the match had been mentioned at times during the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve taken snippets of that prelim throughout our pre-season\u2026 but no specific thoughts of revenge, it\u2019s all about us, Round 1, we\u2019re just trying to get our season off to a good start,\u201d he reiterated, stressing the team was very conscious of avoiding the same poor opening that saw the Panthers sitting in last place after 12 rounds in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout knowing, we let things slip a bit (at the start of the 2025 season),\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been pretty well documented that we missed the mark and we don\u2019t want that to happen again, so everyone has really ripped in, had a great pre-season and worked really hard. Hopefully that puts us in good stead to start the season better than we did last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The incumbent NSW fullback and Kangaroo Tour squad member, Edwards will also be looking to improve his own performances for the Panthers in 2026, describing his 2025 NRL season as \u2018sub par\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to be hitting your straps towards the back end of the year and I wasn\u2019t doing that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was unfortunate and something I had to look at to try and fix up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in five years Penrith is about to enter an NRL season as the hunters,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-519646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519646","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=519646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}