Penrith Panthers defeat Melbourne Storm 22-14, eliminating Storm from NRL finals contention

The Penrith Panthers have held on to beat the Melbourne Storm 22-14 and end their faint mathematical hopes of making the NRL finals.

The Panthers shot out to a 22-0 lead courtesy of a Brian To'o hat-trick and Liam Henry try, but did not score again after the half-hour mark.

Back rower Liam Martin was sent to the sin-bin for a professional foul shortly before half-time and Penrith was Lindsay Smith was binned just after the break for repeated ruck infringements.

Melbourne managed to get on the board against 11 men when Tyran Wishart skipped through the teeth of the defence, and Jack Howarth put a move on Izack Tago to crash over soon after Smith returned to the field.

Jack Cogger joined the list of sin-binned players, which also included Storm back rower Oryn Keeley from the first half, when he hit Wishart high, leading to Siulagi Tuimalatu-Brown's try on the right wing.

But wayward kicking by Nick Meaney and some attacking miscues kept the Storm from getting too close as they fell out of the finals race for the first time since 2010, when they played for no points due to salary cap infringements.

Prior to that, the Storm have not missed the finals since 2002, before Craig Bellamy took over as coach.