Penrith Panthers defeat Canberra Raiders 19-18 at Carrington Park

NRL action returned to Carrington Park for the third consecutive year on Saturday and it put on one hell of a show.

A Peter Wallace field goal inside the final two minutes saw the Penrith Panthers win 19-18 against a fast-finishing Canberra Raiders.

It was the Panthers' second win in Bathurst from the past three years, having gone down to the Sharks in 2014 before trouncing Gold Coast 40-0 last season.

On Saturday the Raiders clawed their way back from an 18-6 deficit, mostly on the back of Penrith errors, and even had the chance to take the lead with an Aidan Sezer field goal attempt.

That failed, but the Panthers also blew their first attempt taken by Jamie Soward.

However, Wallace proved more accurate and his kick ensured Panthers picked up their fourth win of the season.

"He's kicked a lot of field goals in his time, Peter, so when I saw it going back to him I thought he'd kicked it," Panthers coach Anthony Griffin said.

"We came here today to defend a lot better. Luckily that was our focus all week and we had a lot of defence in us today, otherwise we would have gotten beaten today. We were very poor with the ball in the second half.

"We've been hanging in games all year, we've got a lot of resilience at times defensively. It always felt like we were going to win the game, but I was more disappointed as to why we got ourselves into that position. We tried to kill ourselves in that last 20 minutes."

Panthers captain Matt Moylan echoed the thoughts of his coach, and felt Penrith were lucky to escape with a win after a lacklustre second half.

"It was very scrappy. We didn't complete too many sets in that second half. That's what led to them scoring too many points and gave them that momentum, but we were lucky enough that we could swing that in the end and knock that field goal over," he said.

Early in the round nine NRL match, the Raiders were the ones applying pressure on the Panthers line.

However, when a dropped ball was plucked up by Bryce Cartwright, he dashed 80 metres to open the scoring against the run of play.

An excellent flick-offload from Joseph Leilua to put winger Jordan Rapana over got the Raiders back in the game, as on the back of Sezer's sideline conversion it was 6-all.

Poor discipline from the Raiders, who went into the match sitting five spots ahead of Penrith on the ladder, then allowed their opponents to encroach on their territory.

After some sustained pressure the Panthers had the lead back as Tyrone Peachey scored.

Soward kicked a penalty four minutes before the break to give his side a 12-6 lead at half-time.

Both sides had ample chances to add to their tally in the first 10 minutes of the second half.

Jarrod Croker and Jack Wighton linked up to make a run down the left wing, but the latter was grounded short of the line on fifth tackle.

Raiders prop Paul Vaughan came close to scoring after his side was awarded back-to-back penalties, but was held up over the line by the scrambling Panthers defence.

It meant that despite a period of sustained pressure inside the Panthers' half, the Raiders had nothing to show for it.

Peta Hiku punished the Raiders for failing to capitalise on that field position as he got on the end of a Matt Moylan grubber kick to take the Panthers to an 18-6 lead.

But instead of going on with the job from there, Penrith errors invited the Raiders back into the contest.

Once again the Raiders were held up over the line, this time Josh Papalii the man denied a four-pointer with 20 minutes to play.

But Penrith's resistance cracked as Vaughan crashed over from close range and Croker's conversion brought the margin back to six.

Raiders winger Edrick Lee was penalised for a double movement on the try line as he tried to bridge that gap, but the disappointment for his side was short-lived.

Rapana brought the crowd to life with his leaping effort off a bomb, almost dropping the ball before regathering it and planting it down over the line to lock things up at 18-all.

All the momentum was going the Raiders' way and soon enough a Croker run helped set up Sezer for a field goal attempt. It drifted left.

Panthers then took the ball up the other end for an attempt of their own, but Soward's kick did the exact same thing.

However, Wallace's magical finish helped the Panthers to their second one-point victory of the season, the other being their round three success over the Brisbane Broncos.

The result also made amends for the Panthers' 30-22 loss to Canberra in round one.

PENRITH PANTHERS 19 (Bryce Cartwright, Tyrone Peachey, Peta Hiku tries; Jamie Soward 2 conversions; Jamie Soward penalty goal; Peter Wallace field goal) defeated CANBERRA RAIDERS 18 (Jordan Rapana 2, Paul Vaughan tries; Jarrod Croker 3 goals)