It’s a hell of a thing, losing a grand final, and it plants an idea inside a team, one that grows to either define them as they rise to the next challenge or destroy them as they collapse under a pile of what ifs and maybes.
As Parramatta attempt to make sure they’re the former, the Eels are doing all they can to avoid falling into the traps of the latter.
That’s no simple thing because it’s easy to get caught in a state of constant litigation, turning the replays and memories over in your head until they become poison.
Could the Eels have prepared better? Should they have gone into camp before the game, like Penrith did, instead of treating it like any other match? Should they have tried a few more trick plays early, like the Dylan Brown kick for Mitch Moses that constituted their best attacking chance of a brutal first half? What if they could clean up that kick for Scott Sorensen’s try? What if Maika Sivo scored instead of having the ball knocked out at the last minute? What if, what if, what if?
We don’t know. We can’t know. And that’s the worst part of it. It doesn’t matter if you lose the last game of the season by one, 100, or 16 points, and it doesn’t matter if you were ever really in it. Those moments are something you don’t ever forget.
“I haven’t watched it,” Parramatta centre Will Penisini said of the 2022 grand final.
“I remember a lot of it. It was such a fast game.
“I will watch it. I’ve seen highlights and I saw a bit of it when I was over in England for the World Cup.
“Normally I watch the games again the night after but this was a heartbreaker, so it’s harder to watch.
“Everyone knows what happened. I know everyone watched at least some of it, even the new boys that came in.
“We know we don’t want to feel that feeling again.”
For Penisini, jumping straight in Tonga’s World Cup campaign definitely helped. It was a similar story for Eels skipper Junior Paulo, who captained Samoa through their legendary run to the final.
The Toa’s run to Old Trafford captured the imagination of the sporting world and stopped Paulo from dwelling on what could have gone differently that night against the Panthers.
He has not watched the grand final loss either though. He might, but he hasn’t done it yet.
“We’ll see how we go. I think you have to watch it again to get over it,” Paulo said.
“But I felt like the World Cup helped mask the pain and frustration. It gave me something to focus on.
“But you don’t forget about it. It’s a motivation, it gives them team the drive and desire to be there again and not lose it this time around.
“It’s pretty obvious what happened in the grand final for us. We’re [now] more focused on coming in and hitting the ground running.
“There’s a shorter pre-season this time around and we have to bring some new guys up to speed.
“For us, it’s where we want to be this time of year.”
When your team loses a grand final and people are looking to make you feel better they will say, “They’ll be back next year,” or “This is just the beginning,” and sometimes they’re right.
The Panthers are a good example of that. They lost the 2020 grand final to Melbourne before rebounding to take the next two titles.
But the old adage that you need to lose a grand final before you can win one doesn’t always ring true.
Melbourne did it in 2016-17 and Manly did it in 2007-08, but that’s it for the last quarter-century. For plenty of teams, losing a grand final is the thing they never get through.
History is against the Eels and so are the odds. They’ve lost Reed Mahoney and Isaiah Papali’i over the off-season — two of their best players in recent years. A spate of injuries and suspensions has them as underdogs against the Storm on Thursday night.
But there’s no reason for the blue and gold faithful to collapse into despair and start wailing about the long wait since 1986. Josh Hodgson, Paulo’s old Canberra teammate, has come to the club and the Eels have been delighted with what the veteran rake has added to the mix.
Paulo himself has a fair claim for the title of best front-rower in the league. And he hit a new level of form and leadership in the closing stages of 2023, as did halves Mitch Moses and Dylan Brown.
It’s in Penisini that we see glimpses of what’s possible for Parramatta this year. At 20, the Rouse Hill junior is still just scratching the surface of his talents. A lot of the time when players make a grand final so young they can take it for granted and think it will come along again soon.
Penisini thinks differently. He makes things happen. He doesn’t wait for them. He’s focused on the future, not dwelling on the past because you can’t change what’s already happened.
“I want to stamp my foot down as one of the good centres. I want go up a level from what I did last year, where I got used to playing every game,” Penisini said.
“We lost some players, but the new additions to the team have been hungrier than ever. They’ve brought a new energy to the team.
“Training’s been more intense and some of the new additions to the staff, they’ve been really locked in on details, Baz (Trent Barrett) especially.
“The small things he picks up on every player, they’re pretty remarkable. For me, it’s been my positioning, how to get a quick play the ball, where I fit into our new structures.”
There’s always more to learn, more to do, a better player that you can become. And the only way for the Eels to move on is to create new memories under which they bury the old.
For a lot of teams, that never really happens. They’re haunted by old ghosts forever, taunted by the premiership they never ever won.
Parramatta can still escape that fate. Whether they will is still unknown, but their journey to one side of history or the other begins on Thursday night.
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