The countdown clock said 18:59 when Nathan Cleary initiated, set up and then supported his own first-half try.
It was tackle four. He received a pass from Isaah Yeo and sent his own to Isaiah Papali’i, then moved straight into position to take Papali’i’s offload and whisk the ball outside to Izack Tago.
As Tago sent Casey McLean down the right edge and Toby Sexton gave futile chase, Cleary was already making another run inside, through the blue and white bodies and into space outside 10 metres, ensuring McLean could see him available before being taken out.
He claimed the ball once more, sauntered over the line and planted his try. Then he got to his feet and faced the Bulldogs supporters, pressed his right fist to his left palm and took a bow.
Welcome to the House of Cleary. Did you think this dynasty would end here today? Believed the monarch was slipping off the throne? Those four-time premiers who were dead last after 12 rounds and only just snuck into the eight. No team gets this far from seventh spot. It is a ridiculous notion to even contemplate Ivan Cleary’s side might yet be five-time premiers.
Paul Alamoti might simply shrug his shoulders at such talk, as he did after completing his hat-trick in Sunday’s epic takedown of Canterbury, and say: “We specialise in the ridiculous.” And he would be correct, based on a knockout game that was supposed to be tightly contested but wasn’t, and was supposed to be defensive but wasn’t, and was supposed to confirm that Penrith’s window had officially closed but didn’t.
It has not closed because Nathan Cleary is still the playmaker to beat. Because Nathan Cleary is still setting up his own tries, and strangling his opponents, and kicking seven from eight conversion attempts plus a 40/20. And Reece Walsh better watch out for Cleary next weekend in Brisbane, because this was not just a Cleary masterclass – it was a Cleary masterclass with a bow.
But Walsh and Michael Maguire and the rest of the Broncos contingent better also watch out for Alamoti, and Brian To’o, and 200-game man Moses Leota, and Blaize Talagi and Isaiah Papali’i, and the expansive style executed by the entire team that just got them to their sixth successive preliminary final and still in the hunt for a sixth successive grand final. The only concerns are Liam Martin, who sustained a late rib injury and McLean, who was forced off with shoulder pain.
And even though the Bulldogs fought back from a 38-6 half-time deficit, with Jacob Preston, Bronson Xerri and Jacob Kiraz all scoring, the ship had already sailed. Cameron Ciraldo, the former Penrith assistant who took his old club’s game to Belmore and has made good things happen, was a picture of stony silence as his former pace-setters who’d spent the season’s first half at the top of the ladder finished their campaign with a whimper in front of almost 57,000 mostly Bulldogs fans.
Yes, injured skipper Stephen Crichton was still absent. And Lachlan Galvin’s performance was both brilliant and middling, his stunning first-half try and setting up of another was offset by errors that gifted points to the Panthers and will engender more questions about his recruitment from the Tigers. But it would be unfair to point the finger at Galvin, and at the spine overhaul that followed his mid-season arrival (although Reed Mahoney did start this game), the defence really had more questions to answer.
Too many sets were not completed and too many errors made (they missed 42 tackles in the first half alone), and Penrith knew they were weak on the edges, targeting both sides and raking in the points from the off.
But back to Penrith, because this 14th consecutive finals win really was about Penrith. Which is to say, it was not just about Nathan Cleary but the whole team, and the sliding-doors moments that made this late surge possible.
Back in May, the dynasty had been sucked into a “vortex of self-pity”, as coach Ivan Cleary put it. The four-peaters were getting used to a new kind of normal without Jarome Luai, James Fisher-Harris, Isaiah Iongi and Sunia Turuva, and new lows arrived every week until that chastening capitulation to the struggling Knights in Bathurst.
“You wouldn’t say it was something that we’re talking about all the time, but we were probably getting sucked into that vortex of self-pity and just validation of why it can’t keep going,” Cleary said. “That was the line-in-the-sand moment; we were just so kind of disgusted with how it was going, we just had to be real with ourselves.”
After that came a nine-match winning streak, including that gritty 8-6 win over Canterbury – another sliding-doors moment that might have stalled the run and changed the complexion of everything until now had Cleary not charged down that Matt Burton kick and then charged down the ball to score.
The Raiders got hit by the sliding doors on Saturday night, and the minor premiers will wonder if their title hopes would have been snuffed out by Cronulla had their match-winning try against Brisbane the week before not been disallowed, or if Reece Walsh had been sent off instead of sin-binned for his headbutt.
One thing always leads to another, which is why a Bulldogs win seemed on the cards in the opening two minutes, when a Viliame Kikau chargedown on Cleary led to a penalty and two early points on the board.
It might have become the difference in a tight game, had Penrith not smashed the sliding door open in their attacking set, moving the ball out to the right to target Sexton and then shift it back to the left to attack Galvin and give To’o the space to squeeze over in the corner on seven minutes. Four minutes later, Alamoti busted out of three tackles to go over on the right, and the score was already 12-2.
Pre-game, it felt like an attempt at humour when Penrith’s small throng of fans held aloft an “Accor takeover” sign. Nothing funny about it.