Penrith coach Ivan Cleary concedes he faces a challenge trying to retain his crop of young NRL talent with the bulk of them off contract in the next two years.
The Panthers are top of the ladder with eight straight wins before they clash with the Warriors on Friday, despite having the most inexperienced squad in the NRL.
As Cleary himself put it last weekend, the sum of the team is well beyond the value of the parts with players performing at well above their contract worth.
Particularly one that has done well to promote juniors in the salary cap era.
Isaah Yeo, Jarome Luai, Stephen Crichton, Liam Martin, Charlie Staines, Brent Naden, and Caleb Aekins are among 19 players who come off contract before the end of 2021.
“Our squad is getting harder and harder to manage,” Cleary said.
“The lot of young players we have are producing pretty good performances.
“What happens with that is your cap gets under all sorts of pressure.
“There is always the potential (of losing players) for sure.
“We obviously realise that and are busily working in the background to try and make sure that doesn’t happen.
“The team will evolve over the next few years … so it’s a constant management process.”
More positively, Nathan Cleary, Apisai Koroisau, Dylan Edwards, James Fisher-Harris, Viliame Kikau and Brian To’o are among Panthers players signed long term.
Penrith will also likely bank on players wanting to stay at the club having made their way through the junior ranks.
“Part of my job is to create an environment where players want to be here,” Cleary said.
“To give them the best possible opportunity to not only do well for themselves financially in their career but to get them to play the best football.
“That’s the main thing I am working on and if we do quite well at that then things generally work out themselves.”
Meanwhile, Cleary said he hadn’t heard back from the NRL after his response to his $20,000 breach notice for saying he felt Canberra were being “managed” back into last week’s match.
The Panthers coach did not have an opinion on the fairness of the penalty, but instead just wanted to make clear he had not meant to question the referees’ integrity.
“It was not my intention to question anyone’s integrity,” Cleary said.
“But I do understand how that could have been interpreted.”