Embattled Penrith skipper Matt Moylan has broken his silence on his club-imposed one-week ban, declaring his intention to stay in place as captain and repay his teammates for the rest of the year.
Moylan was one of three players dropped to reserve grade just over a week ago after missing an alcohol curfew following their round five defeat to Melbourne.
The trio returned for Saturday's clash against Cronulla but it wasn't enough to prevent a disappointing Panthers outfit from slumping to their third straight defeat.
An embarrassed Moylan addressed the breach of protocol after the match, saying he is working on the off-field mistakes that cast doubt over his leadership abilities.
"Nothing's changed. It's an honour to captain the club," Moylan said.
"Obviously it was a mistake by us. We missed out on an opportunity to help our teammates because of what we done last week. We have to repay them the rest of the year.
"It's something that was brought on by myself so I'm just working through it."
Panthers coach Anthony Griffin reiterated comments he made in the lead-up to the clash, when he backed the 25-year-old to grow.
He quashed suggestions he looked to take the pressure off Moylan by relieving him of the captaincy in favour of veteran hooker and former skipper Peter Wallace.
"I think you just heard Matt talk about where we're at," Griffin said.
"(The) last couple of weeks have been a tough period for everybody, but Matt's the captain of our club. That's not going to change from our end.
"We'll help him develop and he's shown a lot of strength and character over the last couple of weeks. That's going to hold him in good stead going forward but Matt's the captain of our club."
While the captaincy issue was put to bed, the Panthers have the even bigger problem of solving a worrying 2-5 start to the season that has them left them in the bottom four.
And it was their try-less defeat to the Sharks that will be priority number one for Griffin this week when the team begins preparations to take on Parramatta on Saturday.
"We fell behind on the scoreboard and then we attacked them more on what the scoreboard was saying rather than just settling down and trying to build some pressure," Griffin said.
"They're a very good defensive side but clearly our attack was nowhere near what it needs to be there patience-wise or direction-wise."
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