{"id":595823,"date":"2026-04-09T14:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T14:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595823\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T14:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T14:29:10","slug":"ivan-cleary-takes-dig-at-his-players-panthers-press-conference-bulldogs-defeat-panthers-news-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595823\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivan Cleary takes dig at his players, Panthers press conference, Bulldogs defeat Panthers, news, reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panthers coach Ivan Cleary couldn\u2019t help but take a cheeky dig at his much-hyped left edge following Penrith\u2019s shock loss to the Bulldogs<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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The Panthers\u2019 left side, consisting of five-eighth Blaize Talagi and two of the form players in the comp in Casey McLean and Tom Jenkins, were exposed by the Bulldogs\u2019 attack at Accor Stadium.<\/p>\n

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Talagi especially. The young playmaker missed six tackles but the whole left edge was in arrears as the Bulldogs\u2019 right side recorded four line breaks. <\/p>\n

McLean and Jenkins entered the game in sensensational form, even earning serious Origin buzz, which Cleary referenced in his post-game press conference. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, maybe they\u2019re getting ready for origin camp,\u201d Cleary replied with a chuckle to a question on how he assessed his left edge. <\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of boys went back a couple of pegs, but as I\u2019ve mentioned, they\u2019re young and it\u2019s just a good part of the experience for them. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure they\u2019ll bounce back.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cleary was disappointed in his side\u2019s performance as a whole, in what was his son Nathan\u2019s 200th NRL game.<\/p>\n

Penrith have had things all their own way over the first five games of the season, but fell in an early 16-0 hole against the Dogs. <\/p>\n

In typical Penrith fashion, they turned the game in their favour to level it up at 16 before the Bulldogs won the battle in the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe showed some decent signs in that second part of the first half, I didn\u2019t really feel like we were playing our best footy,\u201d Cleary said when reflecting on the performance. <\/p>\n

\u201dTo their credit, they were just harder than we were and we just didn\u2019t respond that well \u2026 they fully deserved their win. We got reminded what a good hard game of footy looks like and I\u2019m sure will be better for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penrith were the first team in NRL history to win their first five games by at least 20 points or more and entered this weekend with a points differential of a whopping 150. <\/p>\n

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Their red-hot start sparked debate whether the Panthers could go through the season unbeaten.<\/a><\/p>\n

While disappointed, co-captain Isaah Yeo is finding a small silver lining with the defeat. <\/p>\n

\u201cRugby league is the ultimate leveler so it might be the best thing for us to maybe stop a little bit of that noise of people talking about being unbeaten through the season,\u201d Yeo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s certainly not the case now but I think we\u2019ll be able to look back and just learn lessons from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to learn lessons from the last few weeks as well but ultimately we\u2019ve sort of been in big leads throughout the game whereas tonight we were sort of a fairway behind and then it\u2019s just a different flow to the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ll be able to learn lessons from that and then ultimately, we\u2019ll be better for it. It\u2019ll stop a little bit of noise which is not a bad thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Panthers coach Ivan Cleary couldn\u2019t help but take a cheeky dig at his much-hyped left edge following Penrith\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,4438,21871,290862,763,5098,5092,161303,761,762,158,290863,4598,7495,668,26498,85,26121],"class_list":{"0":"post-595823","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-casey-mclean","11":"tag-cheeky-dig","12":"tag-footy-looks","13":"tag-fox-league","14":"tag-ivan-cleary","15":"tag-line-breaks","16":"tag-nathan","17":"tag-national-rugby-league","18":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","19":"tag-nrl","20":"tag-origin-camp","21":"tag-penrith-panthers","22":"tag-post-game-press-conference","23":"tag-press-conference","24":"tag-shock-loss","25":"tag-sports","26":"tag-tom-jenkins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595823","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=595823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}