In recent years, Penrith have been no stranger to goodbyes. It's part of life when you're riding high for as long as Penrith have.

This year it's James Fisher-Harris and Jarome Luai, last year it was Stephen Crichton and Spencer Leniu, before that it was Viliame Kikau and Api Koroisau because the salary cap is the only thing the Panthers can't beat.

But this season's farewell is bigger than that, it's to Penrith Stadium itself, the only home the club has ever known since they entered the league in 1967.

Late on Friday night, well after full-time in the qualifying final between the Panthers and the Roosters, the lights will turn off for the last time and the ground will officially become "the old Panthers stadium".

Next year the Panthers will play in Las Vegas and Mudgee and Bathurst and Parramatta as they wait for their new life to begin.

The $300-million redevelopment of the ground, which is scheduled to be completed in time for the 2026 season, marks a big change for Penrith but some things will remain the same.

After the club consulted with the fans on the design of the new stadium, the hills at either end of the ground will be retained.

The names of four club legends – Craig Gower, Greg Alexander, Royce Simmons and Graham Moran – are currently atop the eastern grandstand and the tribute to them will live on in some form.

For the most part, it will mark the beginning of a whole new world for the club and the community. However, the soul of the old place will live on. A stadium is just concrete and plastic seats around a patch of grass, but a home is in the people who call it that and the memories they share together

All the current Panthers have plenty of the latter because this stadium is for Penrith as much as it's for the Panthers. 

The local juniors, like Izack Tago, have been playing there since they were kids – the star centre was just 13 when he first hit the turf for St Marys in a junior grand final.

"It's home. It's a big arena for all of us growing up, you'd work towards it all year just to get the chance to play there, and once you get to the Panthers, it's where you forge your career," Tago said.

"They had a list there of the top 30 players in Panthers history with an asterisk next to all the guys who were local juniors.

"That was always special, I'd train there and think maybe I could be on that list one day."

Moses Leota made that same journey, going from sitting on the hill with his mates to standing in front of it, waiting to thunder into the waiting defence.

"We got these cards from the club that used to get us into games, you'd go in and muck around on the hill with the boys, we'd watch the game, but only a bit," Leota said.

"When it's packed out with the fans, when they're egging you on and screaming your name, those are the little things you can never forget.

"When I'm on the fence about to bring a kick back and I can hear them, it's crazy, it's nerve-wracking, the energy, there's nothing like it."

Other Panthers have come from far and wide to become heroes. During Fisher-Harris's official send off last week, the stadium became a little piece of Kohukohu, the tiny village in New Zealand the departing prop hails from.

For the numerous Panthers who have come over the mountains from the central west, the stadium was the first taste of life in big time footy.

Liam Martin's first time playing there after coming up from Temora was an SG Ball season opener back in 2015. The Panthers lost to the Raiders and there was hardly a soul there.

"But it was incredible," Martin said.

"I'll never forget running out there, it felt like a grand final to me. There wasn't much of a crowd, but that didn't matter."

Like any home, it's the little things that made the ground, the tiny touches you only see if you've been there a thousand times.

For Martin, it's the grass. He loves it, says it's the best surface in the league, bar none, despite the heavy foot traffic it cops every winter.

"You can see the pride the greenkeepers have in it. I might be biased but I think it's the best in the comp," Martin said.

"There's been days where there's four or five games on it but come first grade it's as schmick as ever."

For a fan, it might be knowing precisely where to turn off Woodriff Street to get an easy park, or having an exact spot on the family hill where the view is best, or the moment when AC/DC's Hells Bells starts ringing out as the players take the field.

Liam Henry, one of the club's roughneck young forwards, has a special love for that last one.

"When I first came down from Blayney I couldn't believe how big the place was, I still pinch myself every time I run out," Henry said.

"When you run out and the song plays it feels like you can do anything."

Henry is part of a new generation of Panthers who know the club as a dominant, premiership-winning force.

Their run of three-straight premierships and four consecutive grand finals has been going on long enough that somebody like Casey McLean, the club's impressive young centre, was barely out of primary school when it all got started in 2020.

Now the Panthers and their fans have outgrown the old family home. 

Their lowest home crowd this year was just over 12,000 against the Dragons on a cold, wet, Origin-affected night in July. In 2019, the last year before this run began, that was roughly the size of each home crowd. 

Before that, there were plenty of years where filling the stadium once or twice a season was considered a good result.

The diehards always showed up and it would fill up if Penrith snagged a finals game there, but some days it must have seemed like the only company was the Panther roar they play over the loudspeakers after a good play by the home team.

Now it's full to bursting every week and has become a howling fortress where opposition teams travel to be run through the Panthers buzz-saw, a black hole where opposition thoughts of victory go to die.

It's also the place where Penrith have brought back their premiership trophies to celebrate after each of their grand final wins, turning the place into a temple of victory where the players and fans bask in the greatest winning run modern rugby league has ever known. 

The ground announcer still plays the Panthers roar during games. Most of the time it's hard to hear over the ravenous crowd, who have yet to tire of victory, and if they haven't after five seasons, it's likely they never will, but you can still hear it. 

It can still gee the players up, but they're pretty used to hearing it by now.

"It did when I first started, but once you're around for a while you hear it a lot," Martin said.

"You hear it more on the bench, it can still get you hyped then."

It remains to be seen if the roar makes it to the new stadium. Part of going into the future is leaving pieces of the past behind and Penrith have created a new world for themselves with their success in recent years.

It's made them the greatest team of the modern era and firmly established them as one of the NRL's blue-bloods after more than half a century of being a poorer cousin who occasionally struck it big.

The players and coaches who made it so, even the ones who never wear the black jersey there once it's completed, will live in the walls of the new stadium forever. It'll be the house the dynasty built and to live as a Panther will be to live the history of Penrith.

But even if it's built on the foundations of the old, it will take many years for it to stop being the new place, until fresh memories are created to make it a home.

It will be a different thing, because what happened at the old Penrith Park could not have happened anywhere else, and while it could not last forever, it was Penrith's for as long as it did.