Fisher-Harris remains Penrith's hardest worker in 2018

He's been one of Penrith's breakout stars this season and James Fisher-Harris's work ethic is reflected in his ranking among the VB Hard Earned leaderboard heading into the final round of the Telstra Premiership regular season.

The Kiwi international tops the Panthers according to the Hard Earned metric and remains fifth overall on the NRL leaderboard on 1633 index points, trumping teammates Isaah Yeo (1546) and Viliame Kikau (1236).

The 22-year-old is in his third season in the league and has been one of the standouts for the Panthers this year, cranking out 2097 running metres with 765 tackles at a tackle efficiency of 88.3%.

Despite Penrith's 20-12 loss against the Knights at Panthers Stadium two week ago, and their 36-16 downing to the Warriors at Mt Smart Stadium last Friday night, they have luckily already secured their spot in the finals after having won 14 games over the last 23 rounds.

Despite losing their last two games the Panthers have secured a spot in the finals and will test themselves against the league leaders when they face the Melbourne Storm at AAMI Park on Friday night.

Fisher-Harris's Kiwis teammate Nelson Asofa-Solomona will be looking to cause havoc for the Panthers forwards, having notched 1071 Hard Earned index points to rank second among Storm players behind skipper Cameron Smith (1089).

Manly's Jake Trbojevic remains the king, sitting at the top of the overall season leaderboard comfortably on 1943 index points, after proving to be the hardest working player in an incredible 17 of Manly's 23 matches. 

Each week the VB Hard-Earned Award Index is calculated by doubling the amount of runs a player makes and adding the number of tackles, support plays, decoys, offloads, tackles breaks and charge downs a player makes.

Players lose a point for each missed tackle, four points for each error or penalty and eight for a sin-binning.