‘Needed someone to believe in me’: Tears and ‘persistence’ behind Panthers debutants’ long road

A truth proved by the fact they’ve now won three consecutive NRL premierships — and counting — on the knowledge that systems, as much as superstars, win you NRL titles.

Every year this mob loses players for all sorts of reasons — think injury, Origin and, of course, salary cap constraints — and still find ways, and the warriors required, to keep winning titles.

Which isn’t to suggest the players are simply chess pieces on a board.

They aren’t.

A truth proved by everything that comes before Toelau making his NRL debut off the bench this Saturday.

Same deal Preston Riki.

That young Kiwi backrower responsible for melting who knows how many hearts this week after being captured, in tears, and calling home to grandma, to deliver news of his own NRL debut.

But the phone calls that really define Saturday’s Panthers?

How about Cole asking mum to once again drive him the 400km round trip from Orange for training?

Or Schneider, only last year, going through the discussions that are you being unwanted, and in the Canberra Raiders lower grades, before with few watching, and fewer caring, you’re off and gone to Hull Kingston Rovers in the UK.

For a loan or a lifetime, nobody knew.

Same as nobody was there to capture it.

Indeed, more than this week being about Riki’s emotional call home to his grandmother, Prunella, the real yarn is in all the toil behind those tears.

“It’s been a long journey definitely, a lot of setbacks,” concedes the New Zealand product who is not only debuting at the ripe old age of 26, but after a run of injuries which, even recently, saw him undergo hip surgery and then, on return, bust an ankle.

So bad too that it outed him for the first half a year.

“Then after two games back,” Riki says, “I busted it again.

“Was out for the rest of that year.

“It just felt like every time I got close to a debut, something dragged me back.”

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But still those tears, they come from a deeper place again for this fella who will have some 40 family members in the crowd Saturday.

“I’ve always been close with nan,” the 106kg rookie continues.

“She’s been the rock in our family, the one I’ve always looked up to most.

“But late last year, she had a scare, suffered a stroke.

“It was a worrying time for our family, and I was really sad, but being right in the thick of pre-season, I wasn’t able to go home.”

Yet nan, like her grandson, knows more than a little about fight.

“So to not only still have her here,” he says, “but be able to understand what’s going on, it just makes everything all the more special.”

Same deal Toelau, who was also filmed making his own debut call home to family this week by a Panthers media team quickly proving best on ground at such things.

Yet the conversation you really need to know about?

For Toelau you have to rewind through several years, and much grind, to that night, and conversation, where he was punted by Melbourne Storm.

A cull which cut deeply for this Melbourne kid.

A youngster who not only dreamt of being a hometown NRL hero, but thought he was well on the way to exactly that after winning consecutive player of the year gongs up to Jersey Flegg.

“So I believed in myself,” he recounts. “I just needed someone to believe in me”.

Trouble is, nobody did.

Or not at first.

With Toelau, after being cut by Storm, then rejected by every other NRL club, too — with his only offer eventually coming in the way of a NSW Cup contract with Newtown.

And even then, the poor kid seemed so cursed that after signing the only deal available to him, he still never managed even a single game of Bluebags footy at Henson Park.

And why?

“Covid,” he says, referencing that pandemic which took from him and, he stresses, plenty of others, an entire year of footballing life, and growth.

Yet still, sidelined. and battling the type of homesickness that once saw only a phone call to mum – again unrecorded – stop him from packing it in, Toelau hung strong, trained alone, signed, then played, with St Marys and eventually scored himself a train and trial deal at the foot of the mountains.

All of which goes a long way to defining the Panthers side running out at home, Saturday.

Like Schneider, who has been named to play halfback for the fourth time this year.

And alongside Cole, who also boasts four games.

Just none of them together.

Which according to Fox Sports Statistics, makes these two the most inexperienced Penrith halves since a 2020 crew boasting Tyrone May and Jerome Luai lost to Cronulla in Round 18.

Yet if it were Schneider and Toelau however, the mark drifts out to six years.

But Cole and the kid from Melbourne?

That would be the most inexperienced Panthers pairing since way back in 2004 when, also against the Dragons, Ben Rogers played seven, Daniel Russell six, and the mountain men lost 28-8.

But this, remember, is the Panthers under coach Cleary.

“So it’s simple,” says rookie winger Jesse McLean. “Work hard, work as a team”.

Replacing To’o in just the second game of his NRL career, McLean is readying for a more profitable showing this time out, having copped a $1000 fine on debut for hitting Eels opposite Maika Sivo high.

But as for the club having helped the youngster out?

“No it got taken from my pay,” he laughs. “So a nice welcome to adult life”.

For McLean the conversations worth repeating here are all those that have taken place since not only playing in an NRL trial last year, but the many winters before that as the hyped Blacktown City product rose up through the junior ranks.

“When are you debuting,” the kid would be asked, over and over.

Which doesn’t seem much unless it’s your debut everyone is waiting to see.

“And maybe it isn’t much compared to what others go through,” McLean shrugs of said expectation.

But still, it exists.

“It’s just not something,” he adds, “anyone really talks about”.

Yet his fellow Panthers, they know.

Which goes a long way to explaining all that commotion inside a Panthers meeting room this week when coach Cleary revealed McLean was next man up.

A din that only increased for Riki, then Toelau.

The young playmaker who is as much about family as you’d expect a fella with that rose inked on his left hand – “same as my sister, Tia, has on her finger” – and the year 1953 just above it on his wrist.

“That one is for my nan – Nanna D,” he explains. “We lost her last year.

“Other than my parents, she was my biggest fan and it’s nice to know she’ll be watching down this weekend”.

Which is just one of so many vantage points being taken up by a family that will have dad Manu and several others attending live, while mum Sally watches on from a bar somewhere in China – where she is visiting Toelau’s older brother Tarryn, a teacher, for his 30th birthday.

In the crowd too, Toelau will have partner Hollie and their baby boy Spencer, less than a month old.

“And having them at the game,” he says, “it’s changed my perspective on why I play”.

None of which is how it was supposed to go for this Melbourne kid.

A fella who not so long ago was unwanted by every club in the NRL.

Which is why we want to ask what it is that really has Toelau here? What coach Cleary sees that nobody else did?

Questions which cause the rookie to pause, smile, then sum it all up in a single word.

“Persistence,” he says.