The Panthers' shaky start to the season has left pundits searching for answers, however, Ivan Cleary remains optimistic that his team can still salvage a premiership in 2025.
The four-time premiership winning head coach admitted in his post-game press conference that Saturday night's loss to the Sea Eagles was a setback to the progress they had shown in the win a week prior against the Roosters.
"[We] just didn’t play well enough," he said.
"First half was just too many errors and on the back of that it was like eight to one penalty count."
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With only two wins on the board so far, Penrith find themselves at the very bottom of the ladder. Despite their precarious position, Cleary didn't seem panicked.
"The ladder doesn’t really matter until July or August or something," he said.
"When you only win two games you’re going to be down there somewhere."
When asked if their ladder position was emblematic of the kind of team they are, Cleary suggested that while the results are disappointing, there's still belief that the team has more to offer.
"I don’t think so, but I guess it is," he said.
"I don’t think you can question the character of our team.
"We’re still trying to find what sort of a team we are."
From the players' perspective, club captain Nathan Cleary was frustrated by the team's inconsistency, but had seen enough flashes of brilliance to know there's still something to build on.
"I’m still super positive about what this group can do because I feel like in every single game we’ve had patches that are like the footy we want to play," he said.
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The Panthers have shown over the last four seasons that they have a formula for success, whether they still have the talent to implement their brand of footy is a question that's still up for debate.
"To win NRL games you’ve got to play better for longer and we know how to do that," Ivan Cleary said.
After getting off to a poor start, Penrith managed to claw back Manly's lead. It wasn't until a sin bin to winger Paul Alamoti that things started to unravel for the mountain men.
"The second half became a bit of a shambles. Just start-stopping, people getting binned and just couldn’t get it done," Ivan Cleary said.
Cleary was critical of the match officials, suggesting that the recent implementation of sin bins has taken away from the spectacle of the game.
"I don’t think we want the game as a whole to look like, but it’s just how it is at the moment," he said.