Penrith are officially off to the hottest start to a season in 63 years after claiming their fifth straight win with an historic 50-10 domination of Melbourne.<\/p>\n
In a performance labelled by Andrew Johns as the best of the Panthers’ dynasty, Penrith were near flawless at CommBank Stadium on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Unbeaten after five rounds, Penrith’s for-and-against of +150 is now the best of any team at this stage of the season since the great St George side in 1963.<\/p>\n
Ivan Cleary’s men are also the first in premiership history to have won their first five games of a season by 20 points or more.<\/p>\n
The result marked the first time Melbourne have conceded 50 in a game since 2003, while the Storm’s third straight loss means they now have a losing record this late in a season for the first time since 2018.<\/p>\n
Casey McLean of the Panthers celebrates a try\u00a0Darrian Traynor\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Melbourne also pulled Harry Grant off in the second half after a bump to his knee, though Storm staff were confident he had not suffered a serious injury.<\/p>\n
In reality, no side would have beaten the Panthers on Friday night.<\/p>\n
The clear early favourites to regain the crown after their run of four straight premierships ended last year, the Panthers look better than ever in 2026.<\/p>\n
Their left edge Blaize Talagi, Isaiah Papali’i, Casey McLean and Tom Jenkins tells the story of their regeneration, with none of the four having won a grand final for the club.<\/p>\n
Jenkins’ 12 tries through the first five rounds is also the most in history, having scored a double or hat-trick in every game<\/p>\n
And while that edge is firing, mainstays Nathan Cleary, Isaah Yeo, Dylan Edwards and Liam Martin also played starring roles against the Storm.<\/p>\n
Even when Melbourne threatened to get back into the game at different stages, Penrith’s class shone through.<\/p>\n
Nowhere was that more evident than in the first half with Penrith leading 10-6, and Melbourne attacking their line to take the lead.<\/p>\n
Penrith responded by taking Siulagi Tuimalatu-Brown into touch when Melbourne pushed too wide, and on the next set Papali’i bumped off a defender, offloaded to McLean and Jenkins scored.<\/p>\n
Cleary stepped off his left foot moments later to run through the Storm’s line and score, while a 35-metre effort from McLean on halftime when he brushed off three Melbourne players made it 26-6 and game over.<\/p>\n
The try of the night then came midway through the second half when an outrageous flick pass from Scott Sorensen helped Dylan Edwards send Luke Garner over.<\/p>\n
Penrith’s performance came despite them missing hooker Mitch Kenny through suspension, with Freddy Lussick scoring once from dummy-half while filling in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penrith are officially off to the hottest start to a season in 63 years after claiming their fifth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-582993","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\/582993","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=582993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}