The Ring Dynasty: Emperor Ivan shares his philosophy on success

“I get what a dynasty is, but I don’t know the definition".

That was Ivan Cleary's response on Saturday night to his opposition coach, Craig Fitzgibbon, declaring Penrith are in the "middle of a dynasty".

“A dynasty”, by all rights, should by now be a sporting cliché that has lost all meaning, like “champion” or “legend”.

But while those superlatives are the victims of elastic and subjective definitions, dynasties don’t happen enough in sports for the term to be overused.

No-one says if you’ve won six games in a row, you’ve established a dynasty. It’s not a word that has yet been cheapened. 

Rugby league’s greatest dynasty, of course, is St George’s 11 premierships between 1956 and 1966; the book about it is called 'Never Before, Never Again'.

Cleary’s men have now achieved their own 11 in a row, though: 11 finals series victories on the trot.

They’ve also become only the third side to make five consecutive grand finals, after Saints and South Sydney’s run between 1967 and 1971.

And if we’re talking an intermediate goal between Saints’ 11 premierships and the Bunnies’ five consecutive grand finals, we might look to a club that beat the Panthers at the start of the year.

Wigan, the World Club champions and Super League minor premiers, won seven league titles in a row and eight consecutive Challenge Cups in the 1980s and 1990s.

Then there’s Souths in the 1920s, Parramatta in the 80s….

But there is one thing that sets the Panthers apart from these other great teams: none of them had to perform their feats in spite of a salary cap that is specifically designed to tear down - you guessed it - dynasties.

The team representing the world’s biggest rugby league nursery seems to actually use that numerical advantage to plug holes left by the sport's talent equalisation policies.

It sometimes feels like all 9000 players in the area are actually lined up outside training, ready to step into first grade at a moment’s notice.

“It’s definitely been challenging,” says Cleary of a campaign that started with a 16-12 WCC loss at DW Stadium.

“You just can’t have as good a depth when you’re constantly losing… not just high-class players, but you’re losing players beneath that as well.

“So just to be able to make it all the way to a grand final - I’m just proud of everyone at the club. 

“You can’t make light of it; just to make a grand final is a huge effort from so many people. There’s so much work that goes into it behind the scenes. I’m just so happy for our club, as a whole. 

“At the end of the day we are a development club and if you are going to develop players you can’t have the same guys there all the time. 

“It shows we’re doing some things well. We just want to be consistent. We want to be a team that our community is proud of. We want to win.

"It’s a never-ending goal and challenge and we’re up against a club next week that have set the benchmark for that. I’ve said before, 'we’re inspired by them, we’ve looked up to them'.”