Penrith Panthers plan to tap into Western's women's ranks to build for the future

NRL premiership wins, State of Origin selection and the chance to play at a World Cup has all come because of that but the Panthers don't want to rest on their laurels, they're eyeing more success.

It won't happen overnight, but it will happen is the message from Penrith's development manager Sam Jones when it comes to a future with Western's finest playing in the NRLW for his club.

Western talents have helped the Panthers become a dominant force in male competitions - last season the club won premierships in the NRL, NSW Cup, Jersey Flegg and SG Ball - and Jones hopes to forge that same relationship in the women's game.

He knows the Western region breeds talented footballers and Penrith aims to give them - male and female - the chance to become Panthers.

"We here at Penrith, we work off the model of built from within ... we only every care about our local [Penrith] talent and the Western area. They're our two we look after and that's who we give resources too and give that talent as much opportunity as we can," he said.

"That in the male space has worked well for us and still is, now if we can start mirroring that towards the female space it's only going to get better and bigger.

"But it's going to take time. The relationship we have with the Western area is great, but it's taken many years of work to get it to where it is. We want to take our time to have that happen in the female space, it's not going to happen overnight.

"Ideally is when, it's not a matter of if, but when we have an NRLW team, when the NRL give us a licence, it might be in two, three, four years, our intention is to mirror or male side and have locally developed talent from either Penrith of Western as best as we can."

While Penrith does not yet have an NRLW team, it will play in the 2023 Tarsha Gale Cup (under 19s).

It will also have a Western presence in that competition with Goannas and Forbes pair Kirby Maslin and Georgia Cole, Orange duo Marley Cardwell and Christine Sims plus Charlotte Gray (Cowra) and Taylor Keppie (Grenfell) making the final squad.

Their selection comes off the back of what Jones plans to make an annual Tarsha Gale trial between Penrith's finest emerging talents and Western's young guns.

They played at Carrington Park in December, Penrith just holding on to beat Western six tries to five.

"We put them all in jerseys, they played against each other and the game was fairly even. It started off bit slow because Western were brand new, they'd never played together, while our girls had been training for six weeks," Jones said.

"But towards the end of the game, they [Western] looked the better team.

"It's the first time we've gone towards the female space as we continue to grow our pathways and mirror as closely as we can what we do with the males, that's locally and in the west.

"So it's the first time we've gone out there and run a Panthers-Western program and we're really happy with what we've seen with the talent."

Having impressed in that trial the six Western players - Gray, Keppie, Maslin, Cole, Cardwell and Sims - were invited to play against South Sydney on Friday night.

They again proved that Western is breeding ground for talent as all six made the final squad.

They will head back down to Penrith this coming Friday, train with their new team-mates on Saturday and build towards the February 4 season opener against the Illawarra Steelers.

"I think those six girls were some of our best on Friday night," Jones said.

"We pick a squad of 25 ... every player has to play a minimum two-three games in the competition, we mix the squad around, try different combinations, then the coach can start narrowing it down to what he thinks his best 13 is heading into finals."

While those Western talents now embark on the next step in their league careers, Jones is already thinking ahead.

For the Panthers' 2024 Tarsha Gale selection process he wants to see a squad of Western players training together for six weeks before meeting their Penrith counterparts in a trial.

"We're working really close with Tim Del Guzzo [NSW Rugby League regional manager for Western] in a sense of how we maximise the opportunity for the females," Jones said.

"We want player 25 getting as much opportunity as player one, we don't want to label them."

It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.

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