Panthers Still Alive

The Penrith Panthers late season charge has continued with the mountain men scoring a convincing 28-6 victory over the ailing Canterbury Bulldogs this afternoon in their do or die clash at Telstra Stadium.

The win keeps Penrith’s finals hopes alive heading into the last round of the regular season next week, but their chances like everyone else’s still hinge on another Manly loss.

Canterbury on the other hand were officially eliminated from playoff contention and many of their players will be happy that it is all over after a disappointing season that was marred by injuries and poor form.

Panthers centre Paul Franze continued his hot run of form constantly giving the Bulldogs headaches down the left flank and scored a much deserved hat trick, while his captain Craig Gower also impressed picking up a try scoring double.

Penrith got off to the best possible start with Gower opening the scoring in the eighth minute with a great solo try that saw him shrug off three Bulldogs defenders before planting the ball down just to the right of the posts.

Halfback Preston Campbell made no mistakes with the conversion to send the Panthers out to a 6-0 lead.

The visitors didn’t take long to add to that advantage with Franze picking up his first of the afternoon courtesy of sensational teamwork that ended with the young centre diving over in the left hand corner.

Campbell couldn’t add the extras from out wide leaving the score line at 10-0 after just 16 minutes.

Penrith continued to pile on the points with hooker Luke Priddis busting through some weak defence in the 23rd minute before drawing in the fullback and sending a perfectly weighted pass inside to Gower for his second try of the match.

Campbell made it two out of three to give the Panthers a handy 16 point buffer.

Canterbury gave themselves a glimmer of hope heading into the break with Braith Anasta crashing over shortly before half time to cut the deficit to 10 points, but that was as close as they would get to the Panthers.

Penrith quickly killed off the match early in the second half with Franze burrowing over from close range to restore the Panthers 16 point lead and with just two minutes to go picked up the first hat trick of his NRL career to give his side a convincing 22 point win.

Next week the task gets a lot tougher for the Panthers as they play the in form Wests Tigers in a match that come Sunday afternoon may or may not have a bearing on the playoff race depending on the Sea Eagles result from the night before.

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