IF you ever needed proof Penrith truly is rugby league’s real heartland, take a quick peek at the City Origin side.

No fewer than 10 players are either Penrith juniors or past or present Panthers, including star fullback Matt Moylan, rookie centre Waqa Blake, Reagan Campbell-Gillard, Tyrone Peachey and Bryce Cartwright.

James Roberts scored six tries in six games for the club in 2013, while Penrith juniors Blake Austin and Joseph Paulo both started their NRL careers at the foot of the mountains, as did City skipper Wade Graham.

media_camera Penrith junior Wade Graham will captain City.

Andrew Fifita was another Penrith junior, and was overheard complaining that “all I ever wanted to do was make the under-12s (Penrith) development team, and I didn’t’’.

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City coach Brad Fittler is worshipped at Penrith, while assistant coach Tony Butterfield also played a handful of games at the club before he forged a successful career at Newcastle.

When NRL boss Dave Smith reads this at some stage today, he’ll feel happy knowing rugby league out west is more than holding its own in the turf war against AFL and its Greater Western Sydney, and the A-League’s Western Sydney Wanderers.

Fittler, who was a teenager when he featured in the Panthers’ 1991 premiership victory, was hardly surprised by the amount of talent being trotted out in suburbia.

You have to wonder what’s doing with the kids on the northern beaches, in the Shire and Bondi

Fittler said it was great to have five Panthers in the squad because Penrith ‘’is the heartland of our sport’’.

It was Fittler’s call to give Blake a shot at centres after just four NRL games.

Moylan will be the real star attraction with the fullback already drawing comparisons to the great Darren Lockyer.

Jarryd Hayne virtually won the Origin series for the Blues last year, and his vacated No. 1 jumper could very well be headed Moylan’s way, especially with Josh Dugan capable of slotting into the centres.

“I think it’s the fact he looks like him, and moves like him,’’ Fittler said of Moylan’s Lockyer comparisons.

“He seems to pass like him, run like him. He looks graceful. Players like that are brilliant to watch. There’s so much brute in our game at the moment, when you see blokes like that move across the field, like your Andrew Ettingshausens, your ‘Brandys’ (Greg Alexander), it excites everyone.’’

Moylan is a Penrith pin-up, and his battle with Country opposite Jack Wighton will be one of the highlights in Wagga on Sunday.

media_camera Matt Moylan during a City media opportunity at the SCG. Pic Brett Costello

Despite talk of Moylan eventually shifting from fullback to five-eighth like Lockyer, Fittler wasn’t sold on the move. He said a fullback was the most important position on the field, and Lockyer only moved to No. 6 because Brisbane needed him at the time.

“Everyone feels now if you’re a good fullback, you automatically become a five-eighth. But I don’t believe it,’’ Fittler said.

Freddy said he loved growing up out west, and ‘’played footy in the morning, at lunch and at night for eight months of the year’’.