Penrith will pay a heavy price for supplying the bulk of the stars for the representative period, with the club facing the prospect of paying up to $85,000 in rep bonuses.

The Panthers will provide the Blues with James Maloney, Nathan Cleary, Regan Campbell-Gillard and Tyrone Peachey, triggering $45,000 in bonus payments as per their contracts. The total could have been five had Josh Mansour's injury not ruled him out of contention.

The mountain men also face the prospect of paying out an additional $40,000 if the majority of their New Zealand candidates – Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, James Fisher-Harris, Corey Harawira-Naera, Dean Whare and Sione Katoa – get a call-up for the Denver Test against England.

The club is sitting on top of the NRL ladder after toppling St George Illawarra over the weekend and its representative contingent has played a key role. While Panthers supremo Phil Gould last year threatened to make his players unavailable for State of Origin due to the “toxic” culture of the Blues at the time, he and the rest of the Panthers hierarchy are fully behind NSW for this season’s campaign. However, a sore point is the fact that rep bonuses will be included in the club’s salary cap, a punishment for the club’s success.

“That’s where the cap is wrong, the better you go, the more you get penalised,” said Penrith CEO Brian Fletcher. “There’s nothing wrong with us giving them a bonus, we don’t mind paying it, but it’s terrible when you have to put it in the cap. You get penalised twice.”