Mamba mentality that shaped Penrith’s pack

Scott Bailey | September 23, 2022

They called themselves the Mamba Crew, a Penrith quartet through Sydney’s first lockdown who ultimately helped Moses Leota ensure the club’s forwards stocks did not nosedive two years ago.

Leota, James Fisher-Harris, Viliame Kikau and Zane Tetevano trained together in legally alternating pairs almost daily during the 2020 NRL shutdown.

“The name was Fish’s idea,” Leota said. 

“It came off Kobe Bryant, he worked hard on his craft and that’s what Fish wanted to name it for us to do.”

Bryant’s ‘Mamba mentality’ was built around resilience, fearlessness, obsessiveness, relentlessness and passion in training and preparation.

It was with that thinking the group worked through the shutdown, bringing the same attitude back to Penrith’s training once football resumed.

“I learned a lot from those boys,” Kikau told AAP. 

“We trained almost every day.

“Moses I always knew was going to get better. He’s been really good for us this year.”

At that point Fisher-Harris was already one of the most consistent front-rowers in the game, Kikau a damaging second-rower and Tetevano a solid workman.

But it is Leota who has grown the most.

When James Tamou and Tetevano left the club at the end of 2020, Penrith’s middle depth was the biggest question mark going forward.

Enter Leota.

He and Fisher-Harris have become arguably the best front-row pairing in the competition, with the Panthers winning the yardage battle in all but four games this year.

It was fitting therefore that at Penrith’s presentation night last week, Fisher-Harris declared Leota should have been on stage with him when he won the John Farragher Award for courage and determination.

“Him and Fish still spend a lot of time together,” Kikau said. 

“They do their own extras. You see them in the video room.

“Fish overshadows him a bit, because he takes the reins. But they are best brothers around here.

“Mos just gets better and better and gets us on the front foot every time.”

Leota also knew it was time for him to be counted at the end of 2020 in a team on the rise.

A Penrith junior since relocating in his teens, he had been a regular bench forward at the foot of the mountains for four years.

As a starter he has since earned attention from NSW selectors before eligibility confusion meant he instead made his New Zealand Test debut this year.

“After the other boys left I felt like I had to step up and really go hard,” he said.

“They were really vocal and we looked at them as our older brothers. They really taught us a lot.

“I had been coming off the bench for a long period. It was like an apprenticeship to step up and start.”