It’s the season-opening nightmare that has driven Penrith to the cusp of a history-making assault on this year’s NRL premiership.

With just two games left in the regular season, Panthers star James Tamou admits he is still haunted by the team’s shock round-one humiliation at the hands of St George Illawarra.

Touted as competition co-favourites last summer, Penrith were caught believing their own hype as they were pummelled 42-10 at Kogarah.

It took them more than two months to recover, losing seven of their opening nine games but have since won 11 from 13 and are on the precipice of a stunning move into the top four.

Tamou has vivid recollections of his first NRL match in Panthers colours.

“What they did round one, you can’t leave out of your mind too much. I think they would’ve drew a lot of confidence out of that game. Obviously we’re a different team from then,” Tamou said.

“But it’s just all there and you can still feel that pain.”

The former Kangaroos representative admitted the squad had bought into the pre-season predictions that they were the team to beat alongside Melbourne.

“Especially all the hype, it was more painful to see all the pre-season training and all that come to that result from round one,” he said.

“It was only round one, you don’t do too much in round one. But everyone put so much into that game and to come out with a result like that, it hurt.”

A win by the sixth-placed Panthers over the Dragons, together with Cronulla going down to the Sydney Roosters and Parramatta losing to Brisbane would move Penrith into fourth.

It would be a remarkable turnaround after they were 15th in April. No team has risen from the ashes of a 2-7 start and finished in the top quarter of the ladder.

“It was a dark time. It was really dark for all of us. I remember losing sleep and it was very stressful. It was tough,” Tamou said.

“It’s taken a while but we’ve really bought into what we’re trying to do here and obviously once we’re on the same page, it shows what we can do.”