Friday 24th March at Parramatta Stadium
Penrith 39 – Tries: Uaisele (3), Burns (1), Coote (1), Jennings (1), Tighe (1); Goals: Walsh (5); Field goals: Burns (1) | Parramatta 6
More: themightypanthers.com/match1058.htm
The visitors opened the scoring in the eleventh minute when a series of quick hands in a raid down the left hand blind side was finished with winger Etu Uaisele scoring in the corner.
Five minutes later it was 10-0 when the Panthers attacked the left hand side again and Michael Jennings sliced through the sliding defence.
Just after the halfway point of the second half, Penrith piled on two tries in quick succession to make it 22-0. The first was when the Eels failed to clean up a Luke Walsh kick close to the line, and after taking advantage of the numbers on the left hand side Uaisele crossed for a double. Minutes later, Walsh was in the action again, breaking the line and finding Lachlan Coote on his inside to cross for Penrith’s fourth try.
A Travis Burns field goal on the stroke of half time gave the Panthers a commanding 23-0 lead.
Less than five minutes into the second half, Brad Tighe was the beneficiary of a backline move involving cut out passes and deft hands, and further extended their lead to 27 points.
Another failure by the Eels to clean up a kick close to the line led to another try, this time with Travis Burns simply picking it up and jogging over the line. The conversion gave the Panthers a 33-0 lead.
Any hopes for an all too rare shut out were dashed 12 minutes from full time when Parramatta finally scored, making it 33-6.
However, the Panthers would have the final say on the contest when Uaisele ccrossed for a hat trick with only seconds remaining. The sideline conversion handed Penrith a 39-6 win, which was their biggest ever win against their western Sydney rivals.
The Mighty Panthers 