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NRL Grand Final 2024

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Penrith’s Sorensen passed fit for NRL grand final

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Ivan Cleary has no concerns about throwing Scott Sorensen into the cauldron of an NRL grand final after clearing the Penrith forward to feature against Melbourne.

Cleary confirmed on Saturday that Sorensen was fit to take the field in Sunday’s decider after being sidelined for the past month with a hamstring issue.

The Penrith coach would not confirm who would drop out for Sorensen, but the return of the New Zealand international is a significant boost for the Panthers.

“He’ll be playing. It’s awesome. Sorro’s been a big part of our team the last three years,” Cleary said on Saturday. 

“He’s a real soldier in our team.

“Everyone was pretty bummed when he got injured a few weeks ago (against Parramatta) and it looked like that was the end for him this year. 

“He was really devastated. To be able to work so hard and get back and for him to be able to make a contribution tomorrow is really good.

“Last week he definitely was (pushing to play and) if it was a round game throughout the year, you probably wouldn’t do it, but we definitely considered it. 

“In the end it was just too big a risk, so we were always hoping we’d win the game and we’d be able to give him a chance this week. He has ticked every box.”

Cleary, however, would not be drawn on which player would miss out.

Matt Eisenhuth – a long-serving player at Penrith, who has yet to win an NRL grand final – looms as the most likely casualty of Sorensen being given the all-clear.

Still named on the bench as the Panthers trimmed their squad 24 hours before kick-off, Eisenhuth said earlier this week he would have no issue making way for a fit-again Sorensen. 

Daine Laurie is the other Penrith player alongside Sorensen to be spared the axe from the Panthers’ extended squad.

“That’s the real downer when it comes to this time of year and these sorts of games,” Cleary said.

“You’d love them all to play but they can’t, unfortunately.

“We’ll confirm the 17 tomorrow (on Sunday) … I’ve got things covered.”

Sorensen’s inclusion gives Penrith an extra experienced head to match it in the middle against a Storm side deprived of Nelson Asofa-Solomona due to suspension.

“They (the Storm) had a great season and they’ve been very dominant in their two finals games,” Cleary said. 

“When you get to grand final day you expect to play against the best. That’s certainly the case for us.

“It’s the old saying, to be the best you’ve got to beat the best, and we are looking forward to that challenge.”  

Written by: George Clarke © AAP

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2020 grand final of little use to Storm now: Bellamy

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Storm Coach, Craig Bellamy says there is nothing but “nice memories” to take from Melbourne’s 2020 NRL premiership win as he leads the new-look Storm into the grand-final rematch against Penrith.

Rarely in the ensuing four seasons have triple-reigning premiers Penrith been as comprehensively outplayed as they were by the Storm in the 2020 decider.

Playing his last match, NRL great Cameron Smith skippered the Storm to a 26-0 lead early in the second half, with the side eventually holding on for a 26-20 win and fourth premiership.

Fuelled by their heartbreak, the Panthers twice eliminated the Storm from finals in the years that followed, before the two undisputed best sides of 2024 booked in a grand-final date for Sunday.

But while much has been made of roster changes undergone at Penrith over the past four years, the Storm have been undergoing their own regeneration.

Just four players from the Storm’s 2020 grand final team – Jahrome Hughes, Cameron Munster, Ryan Papenhuyzen and Christian Welch – will face Penrith at Accor Stadium.

And while Penrith’s squad is now largely comprised of players who came through their famous junior nursery, nine of the Storm’s 17 were recruited after the 2020 triumph.

“I was just looking at the last team we had in a grand final in 2020. Nine of those 18 played against us this year,” Bellamy said.

“Having lost them and obviously Cameron (Smith) being the big loss, our side has changed a lot in four years. It’s changed a heap.”

Newly-minted Dally M Medallist Hughes, wily five-eighth Munster and athletic fullback Papenhuyzen were all in the spine on grand final day in 2020, with the last of that trio winning the Clive Churchill Medal as man of the match.

But with Smith still the chief architect at the time, Bellamy said the team had undergone a shift since 2020, and was quick to point out injuries had meant the current spine was only just clicking into gear. 

“It’s a different era with those guys,” he said.

“These guys are just basically starting together. They’ve still got a bit to go, to be quite honest.”

While Sunday’s fixture marks only the second grand final rematch of the NRL era, Bellamy is looking at the two deciders as separate from one another.

“Four years is a long time in life, four years is a real long time in footy,” he said.

“At the end of the day, that was a great result for us back then but I can hardly remember it to be quite honest. 

“What’s important is now. In the past, they’re nice memories, but halfway through next week we’d like to have a nice memory of what happens (on Sunday) too.”

Written by: Jasper Bruce © AAP

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Melbourne Storm prepares to halt Penrith dynasty

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Craig Bellamy has revealed how a sit-down meeting with Melbourne’s new ‘big four’ has put the Storm on the cusp of marking a fresh era in the club’s history and ending Penrith’s stranglehold on the NRL premiership.

The Storm return to their first grand final since the 2020 decider when fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen stole the show and Cameron Smith signed off with a premiership as Melbourne knocked off the Panthers.

In the time since Smith followed Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk into TV punditry, the Storm have fallen short and Penrith have risen to take their mantle as the game’s premier club with three-straight premierships.

Despite Penrith’s success-laden run, Panthers coach Ivan Cleary still humbly refers to Melbourne as “the benchmark” in the NRL.

But after some relatively lean years, Bellamy heads into his 10th grand final with a side believing they can mark the start of a successful post-Smith era against a Penrith team aiming to become the first since St George (1956-1966) to claim four consecutive titles.

It sets up a grand final for the ages.

Like Melbourne’s champion sides of old, the 2024 iteration is underpinned by workaholic forwards and a spine that can make magic happen.

Halfback Jahrome Hughes won the Dally M Medal earlier this week and hooker Harry Grant has begun to add more craft to his dummy-half play.

Crucially, too, five-eighth Cameron Munster and Papenhuyzen look back to their best after wretched runs with injury over the last two seasons.

They got a reminder of what they could achieve when after an unconvincing 28-16 win over South Sydney in round 23, Bellamy sat his ‘big four’ down for a heart to heart.

“(I said) we need you guys to go above and beyond what we usually do or what we’ve expected to do if we’re going to have success this year,” Bellamy said.

“We can wait until next year, but no one wants to do that. Let’s do it now.

Storm head coach Craig Bellamy speaks to media following a Captain’s Run training session, ahead of the 2024 NRL Grand Final at Accor Stadium in Sydney, Saturday, October 5, 2024. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
Storm head coach Craig Bellamy speaks to media following a Captain’s Run training session, ahead of the 2024 NRL Grand Final at Accor Stadium in Sydney, Saturday, October 5, 2024. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)

“It’s not all physical, it’s about talking about it and watching a bit of vision together. It was about putting a bit more time and effort in, and then going from there.”

Remarkably, Sunday’s grand final at Accor Stadium will just be the 20th time the quartet of Papenhuyzen, Grant, Munster and Hughes have played together at NRL level.

Grant said the meeting with Bellamy went a big way to explaining the Storm’s added attacking spark at the end of the year, their preliminary final win over the Roosters highlighting the synergy between their awesome foursome.

“Sometimes you feel things and you assume things,” Grant said.

“But that conversation just cleared a few things up for each other, and set us on the straight and narrow for the back end of the year, which was really important at that time.”

Melbourne will begin the grand final as slight favourites even accounting for Penrith’s experience of appearing in five straight deciders and the absence of Nelson Asofa-Solomona due to suspension.

Sunday’s grand final (7.30pm kick-off) will be the final Panthers game for prop James Fisher-Harris and five-eighth Jarome Luai.

“If there is any sort of that energy where it’s my last year amongst the group then I want this to be a positive one,” Luai said.

“You never really take it lightly, the effort and the achievement it is to be here.

“But between winning and losing there’s a big difference on how you look at your season, so I really want to win this one.”

Written by: George Clarke © AAP

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To Hull and back: Panther Schneider eyes NRL redemption

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A little over 18 months ago, Brad Schneider was given a week’s notice to pack up his life and head to the Super League knowing his dream of becoming an NRL player could be over.

Fast forward to Sunday’s grand final against Melbourne and the 23-year-old Panthers utility has the chance to come off the bench and cap his second coming in Australia with a premiership ring.

Penrith fans know how vital the impact of supersub Jack Cogger was to last year’s grand final success and with question marks over Nathan Cleary’s fitness, Schneider has to be ready to step into the fold.

If Schneider gets on the park it will complete a whirlwind period in which he was shown the door by NRL club Canberra and had to resurrect his career in England with Hull Kingston Rovers. 

Signed by the late, great talent scout Peter Mulholland, Schneider was once touted to become a star halfback for Canberra after captaining his school to the national title.

He was named the Raiders’ rookie of the year in 2022, but mid-2023 it began to dawn on him that he was no longer in the Green Machine’s plans.

“I probably wasn’t in contention for any spots, at least it didn’t feel like I was,” Schneider told AAP. 

“I got that feeling pretty quickly and I was pretty lucky that Hull KR came in for me.

“All I wanted to do was play regularly and there was an opportunity in England.

“There was a feeling of ‘holy crap, I’m going to England’, I’d never been before and it happened in a week. 

“There’s a few examples of people who have gone over there and then come back … I always wanted to come back, but whether it would happen or not I really wasn’t sure.”

Luckily for Schneider he started to realise his potential in a 12-match stint with KR.

In his first two games he kicked match-winning field goals, the second of which came in golden point and booked Rovers a Challenge Cup final berth.  

He played at Wembley in a narrow final loss and took the club within 80 minutes of the Super League grand final.

Penrith came calling not long after and Schneider has proven a shrewd acquisition, deputising while Cleary and Luai have been out of the Panthers side at various points throughout this season. 

“Ivan (Cleary) has been awesome for me and my development,” Schneider said. 

“It’s pretty cool having been on that side of the world and then to be part of a grand final team is pretty crazy.

“Seeing what happened last year with ‘Coggs’ and how he went on and handled it, you know you’ve got to be ready for anything.” 

Written by: George Clarke © AAP

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