This is just what rugby league is now — we all run around for a few months, teams rise and fall and, in the end, the Panthers win.

They have a standing reservation at Stadium Australia every October and they never, ever miss it. We could all have saved a lot of time over the last few years by just leaving the premiership trophy in the foyer of the Panthers Leagues Club.

Their 14-6 grand final victory over Melbourne was not dramatic and cathartic, like their first triumph over the Rabbitohs back in 2021.

Nor was it dominant and furious, like the grand final win over Parramatta in 2022 and it wasn't a miracle, like last year's resurrection against Brisbane.

But it was their most smothering win and perhaps one that best reflects the qualities that have made them immortal. The process of victory is a way of life for them at this point.

The foundations were the same as ever — power yardage runs, a defensive zeal that must be seen to be believed and an insatiable hunger not just to win, but to make their opponents lose.

They locked their jaws onto the Storm and did not let go. They smothered them and did not let them breathe. It looked like it hurt.

This was a footballing suffocation, the kind Melbourne were so good at in the early Craig Bellamy years and it was beautiful to watch, albeit in a brutal, horribly uncomfortable kind of way.

They showed yet again they are a team that finds joy in the struggle, who like the fight more than they like the win — and they like the win an awful lot.

Apart from one miss on Harry Grant early, their defence was impregnable and their mission was clear. They pinned Melbourne down their own end over and over again, and dared them to do something about it.

The Storm, try as they might, could not escape.

The Storm are minor premiers for a reason — even in this game, where they were looking physically outmatched for so long, they managed to find a couple of chances.

But the Panthers were always there, holding players up at the last second, getting across in cover, mugging Storm players who claimed attacking kicks, stopping raids that would have ended with tries against literally any other team in the world.

They didn't give up but eventually, the side that has dominated so much of this season looked out of ideas. Ryan Papenhuyzen and Cameron Munster tried hard with little luck, Grant did what he could with the little room he had and Jahrome Hughes had the quietest game of what has been a magnificent season.

Liam Martin was a deserving winner of the Clive Churchill Medal, but this was a triumph of the many.

Martin's plays were the biggest, as he scored a key try on half-time that gave Penrith a lead that better reflected the run of the first 40 before he somehow won an aerial contest with Xavier Coates to help set up Paul Alamoti's try.

But there were so many others that counted — like Izack Tago's perfectly timed cover tackle on Papenhuyzen, or Alamoti's smart turn and popped pass to Jarome Luai that led to Sunia Turuva's try, or Luai's switch of play in the lead-up to Martin's score or the tough runs of Isaah Yeo and Brian To'o.

You could sit for days listing all the little things that added up to their victory and that's kind of the point. Penrith knows that winning the war comes through claiming victory in a thousand smaller battles — be it one set, one run, or run tackle.

They win everything, all the time. They make a point of it and it's been going on so long that it's difficult to remember what came before or to imagine what might come after.

It's easy to become accustomed to greatness, so it cannot be said enough that this is the sort of run that occurs once or twice in a century. It might never happen again in the lifetime of anybody reading this.

There might still be some of it left. Luai, Fisher-Harris and Turuva are leaving and their departures will test Penrith's ability to continue to regenerate, but they have already replaced more talent than most teams can ever hope to find and nothing has changed.

So who's to say they won't go again? Who's to say this will ever end? Boys have become men while this run has been going, who's to say they won't grow old waiting for it to pass?

All the measures designed to stop things like this happening have been laughably ineffective.

Penrith swept them all aside years ago — things like the salary cap squeeze and the complacency that sooner or later claims every premiership side, they're broken on the road behind them.

They just keep winning, every year, come hell or high water, no matter what. The rugby league story now has one ending and Penrith never, ever get tired of telling it.