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Remember the movie Interstellar when Matthew McConaughey visited a remote planet and gravitational time dilation meant his three hour stay equated to 51 years back on earth?

By the time he’d returned, everyone had relocated to Saturn, his daughter was an 80-year-old grandma on her deathbed, and most predictably, the bloody Panthers were still on their current title streak.

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Don’t fool yourself otherwise; the Mountain Men are storming to another premiership and in the words of the protagonist of this sci-fi epic, it ain’t “alright alright alright.”

With four consecutive titles already under their belt, Penrith’s grip on NRL supremacy had already gone beyond a joke.

Not only has it stranded the Provan-Summons trophy in the foyer of Penrith Leagues Club for half a decade, the side’s inexhaustible greed has reduced the rest of the NRL to a chasing flock of leprous losers.

But Sunday’s brutal dismantling of the Bulldogs — in addition to their rivals battling various injury crises and mental scars — indicates a fifth straight premiership will be another layup for Ivan Cleary’s men.

And once they secure it, we might as well start worrying about their sixth, seventh and eighth too and whether it’s easier to just write off the decade and round it up to ten.

Stuff these in-perpetuity dictatorships, when will we ever escape the Alcatraz of Penrith‘s reign?

Does the NRL need to force them to re-hire Gus Gould? Or should we all just recolonise to Gargantua for the next 180 space months while their 500 year domination blows over?

Sadly, the manner in which this champion side has mugged us blind this year means we can never trust them again.

12 weeks ago, the four-peat premiers were a ramshackle also-ran playing out of an Airbnb stadium with a forward pack like a punched casserole.

Wallowing in last place with an edge defence that flapped like laundry on the Hills Hoist, Penrith were so abysmal they even copped a touch-up from the Newcastle Knights, a team of such impotence that it scores points in fractions.

But despite granting themselves half the year off, come the final round they’d magically reappeared in the top eight like carrots in puke: we dunno how they got in there, but we weren’t surprised.

Now the rest of the NRL is cowering in their shadow again, even though they finished in the finals-fodder 7th spot with a line-up that is an anonymous husk of its previous forms.

The sudden death positions outside the top four are usually a bridge too far even for the most formidable outfits, but thus far the scenic route to the prelims has only fed Penrith’s belief rather than starved it.

After shooing the Warriors and shredding the Bulldogs, they’re now on a trajectory to flick the Broncos and arrive on Grand Final Sunday fit enough to play all three grades.

Nevertheless, despite Penrith dominating the premiership forever, subsidising the rest of the competition with their juniors and housing their trainers in our brains rent-free, there is still another kick in the abdomen coming for the rest of us pathetic losers.

Only a fortnight ago we faced the mouth-watering prospect of a new premier, with every outcome in play from a Canberra fairytale, a Bulldogs revival or anyone else new provided it wasn’t the Storm.

But after entering the back-straight post-Origin with our appetites whet for a fresh champion, suddenly we’re about to be fed another mundane Storm vs Penrith grand final.

Let’s be real; Cronulla won’t get a razoo in Melbourne, and while the Broncos ooze points with Reece Walsh, Ben Hunt and the returning Adam Reynolds, they’ll be no match for Penrith’s September specialists in Nathan Cleary, Paul Alamoti and the ghost of 2023.

Cleary’s showcase against the Bulldogs not only signals he’s seasonally ripening again, it reaffirms there’s no amount of premiership players you can strip from his hips to reduce his influence.

The Panthers have shedded 16 grand final participants on this incredible run since 2020 yet the results never waver thanks to one common denominator- and it’s not the bloke wetting the Steedens.

Everyone knows the defending premiers could take the field with 12 cinder blocks and provided Cleary was there stacking them in formation, they’d still brain the opposition.

And that’s why as long as this deadset freakazoid is still playing, our only hope of avoiding Panther reign is Saturn or Gus.

– Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.