The Panthers will be sweating on two of their biggest stars after representative forward Liam Martin left Accor Stadium in a knee brace, while Origin hopeful Casey McLean was sent to the sin bin and struggled defensively in their shock loss to the Bulldogs. <\/p>\n
Martin came off late in the second half and appeared to feel for his left knee, with early suggestions that he\u2019s suffered medial damage which will require scans.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said it was feeling a bit loose so I\u2019m not too sure,\u201d Penrith coach Ivan Cleary said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost likely it\u2019s a medial, but he\u2019s not in a lot of pain or stiffness or anything so that might be something.\u201d<\/p>\n
In better news, Cleary revealed that Liam Henry is set to make his return from injury on Friday night in the NSW Cup after his side went down 32-16 to end their perfect start to the season.<\/p>\n
McLean now faces a nervous wait for the charge sheet to drop after he was marched in the eighth minute for a high shot on Max King that was initially missed but spotted a set later by the Bunker. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy initial thoughts are that based around the pub test, none of the players saw it or felt it,\u201d Cleary said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might have been shoulder and then head (which caused the) whiplash. It looked like similar to another one we had in the trial game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not much vision so it\u2019s hard to say. He (King) came back on so that\u2019s good news.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLean wasn\u2019t at his best after a brilliant start to the season that has him in contention to make his Blues debut next month. <\/p>\n
His coach didn\u2019t single him out, but he did suggest a few players on his left edge will learn some valuable lessons after they were picked apart by the Bulldogs. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe they were getting ready for Origin camp,\u201d Cleary laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cA couple of the boys went back a couple of pegs tonight. They\u2019re young and it\u2019s a good part of the experience for them. I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll bounce back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bulldogs halfback Lachlan Galvin tormented that side of the field in what was arguably his best performance in the NRL in what\u2019s been a career that\u2019s been heavily scrutinised since he made his Tigers debut. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was his 50th game tonight. A lot of people say it takes 50 games to feel like an NRL player or to understand it,\u201d Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he was brilliant. He controlled the game for long periods, he did what he needed to do and he didn\u2019t overplay his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has to deal with a fair bit. There are always question marks asked about him, but he\u2019s handled it great.\u201d<\/p>\n
The loss snapped Penrith\u2019s perfect start to the season that had seen them win all five games by at least 20 points which led to suggestions that they could go through 2026 without losing a game. <\/p>\n
\u201cRugby league is the ultimate leveller 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 co-captain Isaah 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 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 we\u2019ll need to be better for it. It\u2019ll stop a little bit of noise, which is not a bad thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur best footy is still in front of us, but it probably took a bit of a step back tonight which is disappointing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Panthers will be sweating on two of their biggest stars after representative forward Liam Martin left Accor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,4026,7618,4438,12979,5098,4617,44184,761,762,158,5357,8088,85,26428],"class_list":{"0":"post-596162","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-bulldogs","11":"tag-cameron-ciraldo","12":"tag-casey-mclean","13":"tag-injuries","14":"tag-ivan-cleary","15":"tag-lachlan-galvin","16":"tag-liam-martin","17":"tag-national-rugby-league","18":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","19":"tag-nrl","20":"tag-panthers","21":"tag-sin-bin","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-streaks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596162","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=596162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}