Two years ago Penrith hooker Peter Wallace walked into Phil Gould's office and was told it was time to retire. Now he will captain the Panthers in this year's finals series.

Victory over New Zealand Warriors allowed the Tigers to leapfrog Gold Coast Titans and end the year in 14th place.

Just weeks after favourite son Benji Marshall announced he will be returning to Wests Tigers, the joint-venture outfit will hand his younger brother his NRL debut.

Rival clubs have made enquiries about Matt Moylan amid speculation the Panthers skipper is unsettled at Penrith.

The Wests Tigers always felt Mitchell Moses strutted around Concord with a sense of entitlement. Perhaps that's the result of hearing repetitive references to being "a superstar in the making" since the age of 16.

A three try blitz in 10 minutes has rescued North Queensland's stuttering premiership campaign.

Wests Tigers coach Ivan Cleary still harbours concerns about the NRL's year-round contract system, but has distanced the joint venture from actively angling to keep skipper Aaron Woods at the club in the wake of the Bulldogs' salary cap squeeze.

At a time when the NRL is rummaging for every dollar to keep clubs and stakeholders happy, how does the Rugby League Players Associations threat to boycott the Dally M Medal punish the governing body?

The Sydney Roosters survived an almighty scare from a resurgent Wests Tigers to avoid being on the wrong end of what would have been the upset of the season on Saturday night.

Manly coach Trent Barrett admits it would hurt if Sunday's surprise defeat to Wests Tigers costs his side a top-four finish.

These were the kind of scenes you would routinely see at Leichhardt Oval when Benji Marshall was here in his pomp.

• EXCLUSIVE

'I'm coming home. I never wanted to leave the place, and I've tried several times to get back and now I've got my chance.'

So what about Phil Gould's five year plan at the Panthers? "There has never been a five year plan. That's media gibberish," Gould fires back.

Edgy clubs are keenly awaiting the finalisation of the cap for 2018.

Is Mitchell Moses a better footballer at Parramatta than he was at the Wests Tigers? Judging by his performances over the past month in particular, it's safe to assume so. But not according to the man himself.

There are players and officials at Wests Tigers still haunted by the death of Mosese Fotuaika, the 20-year-old front row forward who took his own life in 2013, shortly after sustaining a potentially season ending pectoral muscle injury at the club's Concord gym.

Penrith are finally where they should have been weeks ago, with coach Anthony Griffin admitting he never gave up on his side's finals hopes despite a disastrous start to the year.

Nathan Cleary lined up a conversion to end the Wests Tigers' hopes of victory right in front of his father, who was watching on in the away coaching box begging for his son to miss.

Just before Ivan Cleary's shock departure from the Penrith Panthers at the end of the 2015 season, he sat down with son Nathan to discuss how long it would take before he would get a taste of NRL football.