Panthers 46 Warriors 22

FOR two rounds, they were the jokes of the NRL. Now they are the jokers. When Penrith coach Matthew Elliott was pleading with his team to stand up after their early failings this season, we may have all misunderstood him.

While most of us would have assumed the thrust of Elliott's urgings was "stand up and be counted", maybe he wanted more of a stand-up comedy routine. "We're cracking jokes again, we must have won," Elliott said yesterday.

They are, and they did. The Panthers belted the Warriors to record their fifth win of the season, bringing respectability - and comedy - back to the club.

As entertainment goes, it was all good fare. The Panthers scored some wonderful tries. Michael Gordon (who scored as many points as the Warriors), Frank Pritchard and Michael Jennings all crossed for doubles, and Elliott remarked: "The feedback from all the players is it's good fun out there, and that's a good sign for our team."

He was then asked how the entertainment the side brought compared to his previous teams, to which his skipper, Luke Priddis, asked: "Was that in the 80s?" "Yeah, it was still black and white TV then, Priddo," Elliott replied. Boom-tish.

Then the absurd: "Even in that second half, even though we had some late tries put on us, our defensive effort on our tryline and our defensive effort in a lot of games - I was saying to Priddo, it's like we need to have six shots of tequila every week at about 4am before we feel satisfied because we still manage to bang a phase of the game in where we've got to rock back on the back fence and have a team fire at us for 10 minutes on our tryline. So we quenched our thirst there, conceded a couple of tries on last plays, but the attitude and the mentality to do that has been consistently outstanding."

While some of his humour was difficult to grasp, it is clear that his coaching is not. It is now known that, as the Panthers slumped early in the season, some of his players found his coaching had been difficult to understand.

Prop and regular skipper Petero Civoniceva eventually approached him and told the coach of the playing group's concerns, and that seemed a turning point.

"Everyone keeps referring to those first couple of weeks, and the players gave some really constructive and important feedback," Elliott said. "This guy [Priddis] has played over 250 games of first grade. If you're not going to take the advice and opinion of those guys, in the modern game, you're a pretty naive coach.

"I don't want to be seen as that. It's been a while since I ran around a park - and run is a real liberal use of the word (boom-tish) - so they gave us some great feedback on our preparation and how we should play and it was taken on board.

"Sometimes it's just reminding each other that it's just footy. It's professional footy and it's an elite pursuit and you need to make sure that you do the little things right, but the day that you don't take the opportunity to enjoy training, the day that coaches don't set up structures at training that makes it enjoyable, then maybe we should get a job on the stock exchange."

Pritchard sums up the fun. A player whose emotions go up and down like a yo-yo, he was clearly unhappy previously yet his performance yesterday in terrorising a big and physical forward pack proves he is enjoying himself at Penrith.

"Training's a lot less intense," Pritchard said. "I think the coaching staff had to come halfway. At the moment, everyone seems fresh.

"Last year, blokes were rocking up flat and it seemed to show. That's the key for us, being fresh. We're enjoying it, and we're getting the points on the board."

Fullback Rhys Wesser, who was singled out for special praise by Elliott, added: "We've just come together as a group. The difference between this year and last year - we've really got to know each other, come together as a team. Last year, a lot of the younger guys were a bit separated from the older guys. Now it's a team. We're more mates than just work colleagues."

The Warriors, meanwhile, resembled distant relatives. Away from home, their awful record continues. Five games so far have resulted in five losses - and bad ones at that. The joke was truly on them.