It’s been a rollercoaster ride for the former Bushawk, but Tom Jenkins seems to have found a home in the NRL.
Boorowa product Tom Jenkins produced the goods for the Panthers recently, scoring his first NRL hat-trick in the Panthers 18-14 win against the Wests Tigers at CommBank Stadium. Jenkins’ contribution was vital for the Panthers who outside of their terrific left edge play had very little to celebrate with the game lacking plenty of quality.
In a man-of-the-match performance, the winger put up 22 carries for 253 metres, five line-breaks and seven tackles. It’s been a rocky start to the 24-year-old NRL career, having featured primarily for Penrith and Newcastle Jersey Flegg sides, it would’ve been understandable for Tom to take an easier route, find a competitive country league, and make a nice amount of money doing it, instead, he packed up his bags and moved back to Penrith, working his socks up to climb up the grades and now looks to be a main-stay of the Panthers 17 and will surely soon be offered an extension.
Tom was in ecstasy after his heroic performance. “It was a good day. A good win, one that was needed that’s for sure.”
“It’s a bit surreal. It was tough leaving Newcastle and not knowing what was next. To look back now and see how it unfolded and how the year is going is good. It is one of those things that I will probably look back on post-season and be able to sit back and reflect on and enjoy it.
“At the moment it’s still mid-season, so we’ve still got goals to kick and things to do.
“It’s a bit unchartered this year. It’s a bit different for the majority of the squad, but in saying that, as a squad, as a whole; we’re all connected, we all believe, we all know what we can do, the leadership team and Ivan (Cleary), along with the coaching staff are the ones who drive that the most, they are people who show up every day and know exactly what they want and if things aren’t up to standard they are the first ones to pull it up and they will pull themselves up as well, which is always good. They just know when things are going right and when things are going wrong and how to control it and how to stay in the moment and I think that is probably the hardest thing being a football player is when things are going wrong how do you stay in the moment, how do you control the game, get back into rhythm, and I think the leaders are the best at that. They play on the biggest stages and they have just won four in a row, so they know how to get back to that and get back to what they need to do.
“There are so many things I can still improve on. You could start it physically or mentally. I think mental is a big one and just maturity. I like the idea of staying where my feet are and being able to go play-by-play and not worry too much about the outcome and worry about the focus kind of thing, the process of the game and just being alive at any moment because you just never know, there’s so much talent around our field at the moment and one minute you think there might not be anything going on and the next thing someone has made a break. I think my biggest one is just always being ready, and being able to make play when I need to. I didn’t do pre-season, but from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen the belief is always there, the hunger to want to get better, there’s no doubt about that in the playing group, but as you said, over the last five years it grows and grows. A lot would expect or think that it will go away, but to be honest, it’s probably even gotten better, everyone believes, everyone expects, and the expectation of winning is part of the club now. It’s showing that things haven’t come and gone the way we’d like it to, but you always want to be up the top of the ladder, you always want to be winning, but sometimes that’s just not footy. How far away are we from the top, when you think about it Bulldogs have been in top form and it will be a good match-up against us because we believe that we are not too far off those teams.”
-Tully Potts
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