The shadow of a new era will descend on Penrith on Saturday when Ivan Cleary makes his first visit since being appointed the NRL club's head coach for 2012.

Cleary's Warriors will hit Centrebet Stadium just as Panthers stalwarts Petero Civoniceva, Trent Waterhouse, Matthew Bell and Adrian Purtell farewell their fans in the club's last home game of the season.

Penrith won't be playing for a finals spot but they will be hellbent on seeing the departing quartet walk off the ground with a victory.

Even more motivating, though, will be achieving a win for caretaker coach Steve Georgallis, who the players were disappointed to see overlooked for Cleary.

"There'll be a lot of feeling in the game and a lot of emotion," Georgallis told AAP on Friday.

"(Those) guys are leaving the club and they've been here for a while, and then obviously (there's) the players that are playing to impress the new coach who's coming in.

"He's probably keeping one eye on his team and one eye on us."

Georgallis and Bell will head to the Wests Tigers next season, while captain Civoniceva heads back to Brisbane and Waterhouse and Purtell head to the English Super League.

The shake-up at the Panthers has come after former first grade coach Phil Gould was appointed in May to restructure the football operations of the club.

Head coach Matt Elliott was told he would be replaced after 2011 in April and stood down two months later.

Georgallis, who had formed a bond with many of the players as a lower grade coach, was told he had been given an audition for the top job, only for Cleary to be announced little over a week later.

Gould was impressed with Cleary's ability to make the most of the Auckland club's rich junior base, the influential commentator and columnist's number one priority for the Panthers.

But Georgallis defended his own record of creating first-graders.

"Obviously they've been there coaching their team and we've been here coaching our team," he said.

"There's a lot of juniors that I've coached obviously playing first grade now like (Michael) Jennings, (Lachlan) Coote, (Tim) Grant that I had a lot to do with.

"That's just the process you go through as a coach, as you're coming through the juniors you probably have players that you want to bring through to first grade, that you think can play first grade."

Waterhouse, who debuted in 2002 and was a part of the premiership-winning side a year later, played down the do-it-for-Georgallis mentality.

"Nothing's been talked about like that," he said. "That was a while ago now.

"We were disappointed for him at the time but we've moved on and Georgy's back on his feet, he's got a job at the Tigers, so there's no motivation for coaches or anything like that."

Warriors assistant coach Tony Iro, though, was under no illusions the Panthers players would be fired up.

"I suppose there's special circumstances with this being our head coach's new club - they'll be pretty determined to put on a good performance," Iro said.

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