Matt Moylan's State of Origin candidacy has been endorsed by his Penrith coach Ivan Cleary and Sunday's Anzac Day medallist Lewis Brown after another standout performance that will have caught the eye of Laurie Daley.
The Panthers fullback was shaded by Brown for man-of-the-match honours in a much-needed eight-point win over Cronulla but few of the 12,798 crowd will have left Pepper Stadium believing there were any better than Moylan in action.
Daley has made it clear the NSW fullback position made vacant by the absence of NFL aspirant Jarryd Hayne is a three-horse race and while St George Illawarra's Josh Dugan has his nose in front , and Manly's Brett Stewart is also in the mix, Moylan offered another reminder of what he could provide in the interstate arena on Sunday.
The 23-year-old scored a try, was disallowed a second when he was held up but set up another for Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, and in defence made two try-saving tackles. Cleary summarised afterwards that his No.1 had not been as involved as he has been in previous outings. Heaven help opposition teams if this was him in a quiet mood.
"Every time he gets asked to go up to a different level he seems to handle it so I'm not going to say he can't handle it," Cleary said when asked how Moylan would cope in Origin, a view shared by stand-in captain Brown. "At each level he gets given he takes it up," said the New Zealand international forward, who featured for all 80 minutes in his first match back from a rib injury. "He's a confidence kid without being arrogant or anything and he is coming on leaps and bounds. I'd certainly like to see him in a blue jumper but if he isn't it's good for us - we'd keep him for the Origin period. He'd be up to the task I believe. He's certainly got some good strength he could add to that Blues side."
With the breeze at their back, Cleary's men, having trailed 18-12 at half-time, held the Sharks scoreless from then on to deny Cronulla a fourth win in a row. For the injury-ravaged Panthers it was only their second win in their past six starts. The match was in the balance for much of the afternoon but it was clinched by the hosts when former Shark Tyrone Peachey latched onto a Will Smith grubber with eight minutes remaining.
The Panthers are still without the injured Elijah Taylor, Jamie Soward, Peter Wallace, Brent Kite, Josh Mansour and Jamal Idris but welcomed back Brown and another ex-Shark David Simmons on Sunday, with the veteran winger opening the scoring. "We've had a rough few weeks, been down a few troops and lost a bit of confidence too so that will be a bit of a shot in the arm," Cleary said. "We've got a couple of byes coming up ... I think we've got four games in about seven weeks and somewhere in there we'll get some troops back which will be obviously needed."
Cleary joked: "No disrespect to 'Sharky' [Brown] but we're starting to go down the list in terms of captains. We'll have to keep him because he got the man of the match and we won the game."
Cronulla coach Shane Flanagan, meanwhile, was left to lament a missed opportunity in Sydney's deep west, although teenage fullback Valentine Holmes produced one of the highlights of the season with a diving, one-handed try.
"We were in the game with 10 minutes to go and I thought we should have been good enough to get it," Flanagan said.
