This is one of those subjective questions with no real answer as we can't pit sides from the past against teams from the present, but it's a discussion we all love to have.

I would pick out three outstanding club sides from the past forty or so years:
Parramatta 1981-83, Wigan 1990-94, Penrith 2021-24.

Each of them were dominant, each were packed full of superstar players, each set a benchmark for others to follow.
Wigan's achievements were slightly skewed due to having a massive financial advantage over everyone which allowed them to cherry pick everyone else's best players thereby weakening their main opposition, but they unquestionably contained some of the finest players of the early nineties.

The great Parramatta side (the only other team apart from Penrith to complete a hat-trick of NSW/NRL victories since the late sixties) came about due to a freakish collection of young players all coming through together (Ella, Grothe, Kenny, Sterling). The bizarre thing about them was that, apart from this period (roughly 76-86 in total), Parramatta have effectively amounted to very little throughout the rest of their history, generally being no more than bit-part players in most seasons.

One of the commentators, at the end of today's game, said that winning four in a row shouldn't be possible in the modern day salary cap sport. Players are also more inclined to switch clubs than they were in years gone by.
Given the context, circumstances and standards of today's NRL, I think today's historic win does probably make Penrith the greatest RL club side of the past fifty years.
Any comparisons with a team pre-1970 (possibly even pre-1980) is largely fatuous as we really are talking about a wholly different sport, certainly a more brutal one!! Teams from the 1960s would have had their own special ways of dealing with someone like Nathan Cleary!!

That's if their beer-bellies could get anywhere near to 'dealing' with him.
Glad you partially agree.

Didn’t take long for 1 of the resident moaners to quote me about what the Leigh fans told me about the lads from leigh….I’ve got Bonend on ignore but I do wish he would just pi££ off and take peg-end with him

I was at the match last night and they are a superb team. Have been a season ticket holder at Penrith since joining their Leagues Club in 2000 when I departed our house near Cronulla and took up residence in the Blue Mountains.

With the loss this season of Crichton and Leniu I thought they could not win this year and actually tipped the Storm to beat them on another RL forum. The last team to beat them in a GF was Melbourne back in 2020 so this was sweet revenge!
They have lost another 3 influential players for next season.

I have recently moved again to the Mid- North coast so have given up my season ticket but will continue to go to all future GF's.

Not sure where this financial advantage comes from? It was a case of speculate to accumulate, everyone could have done what we did, but we were the only club with the bottle to do it.

Shame non of the Championship semi's are been shown on tv this weekend .

I have a suspicion that some clubs didn't lack bottle but money.
It's all a bit before my time though.

Erm no, Maurice Lyndsey had the cash and he splashed it. Same as FC in the late 70’s early 80’s. We signed players to stop other teams getting them.

A lot of clubs tried and failed trying to keep up with Wigan at the time and paid the price down the line .

Don't think that's quite the whole picture here.
In the late 80s the Wigan board (Lindsey and a couple of business partners I believe) made a hefty injection of cash into the club, at a level well beyond most other club's reach at the time.

The end result of this investment was that by the early 90s Wigan were operating a full-time squad within what was then still ostensibly a part-time sport. I believe Leeds were moving towards a similar model as the winter era came to a close, but virtually every other club in the game at that time simply didn't have access to that level of funding, even if the wish to do so was there. Certainly was the case with Hull Fc who hit financial difficulties as the decade wore on.

I don't deny that it was forward thinking by the Wigan board, and it did produce a superb team arguably the best club side the British game has seen, but it was unquestionably operating in an uneven playing field, hence my point above about your achievements when set against, say, Penrith's four successive NRL titles in a salary capped competition.

The equivalent today would be expecting championship football sides to compete with Manchester City. I admired the Wigan side 1990-95 and respected the raising of standards and new professionalism they brought to British rugby league, but the caveat remains that it happened against diminished opposition. They weren't tested often enough because the rest of us were incapable of putting together a team to compete.

That's fair comment and eloquently put I may add

Trueman named in the Wakefield squad for the semi final against York

NEWS REPORT

Reports have come through that Police have stopped and arrested 50 Hull KR fans on the M62 with flares as they were on their way to the Grand Final v Wigan at Old Trafford today.
It turned out they were the same flares they were wearing the last time they won a trophy in 1985

Wigan Wigan.

Think this evening may revolve around which is the bigger factor; Wigan's experience in seemingly to always pull out the right performance on the biggest occasions or rovers hunger and desire to end their (long) trophy drought?

Reckon Wigan will just have that little bit extra class and know-how to get the job done tonight, probably by a score, around 18-12, but it could easily fall the other way.

My nagging doubt is that sooner or later someone has to bust open the Wigan/Saints/Leeds cartel and lift the trophy. Let's hope it's not tonight

C'mon Wigan, you have half the City of Hull roaring you on to victory tonight!!