The many State of Origin lives of Nathan Cleary

Source : ABC NEWS

As the weather gets colder and the battle between New South Wales and Queensland heats up, you can bet your last dollar Nathan Cleary is set for another run in the State of Origin spotlight.

If it feels like an annual tradition at this point, that’s because it is — and given he started so young, it’s hard to think of Cleary as a veteran, even though at just 27, his experience shows that’s exactly what he is.

His NRL debut was almost 10 seasons ago to the week, which is long enough to see a generation of players come and go. With news coming through on Origin eve that Bryce Cartwright was leaving Parramatta, just eight of the 33 other players who took the field in Cleary’s first NRL game are still in the league.

Cleary is level with Latrell Mitchell and Angus Crichton as the state’s longest-serving player and level with Crichton and Isaah Yeo as the side’s most capped current player.

On Wednesday night, he will draw level with Andrew Johns and Mitchell Pearce with 16 caps at halfback for New South Wales, the most of any player in Blues history.

He’s been around long enough that there’s little left to say about Cleary in Origin football — and little he hasn’t already been.

There were the early years, where he rode shotgun to James Maloney as the junior partner in the halves combination for two series that, given what’s happened since, seem like they’re from a different player in a different life even if a few old feelings returned for Cleary ahead of Game I, which marked his first Origin match in two years.

“It comes with more expectations now, with the standing in the game and the amount of games I’ve played,” Cleary said.

“But I’m in a position to play my best footy, I had a very simplified role (back then) and contributed where I could. It’s the same now, I want to do my role and my best for the team, but it’s having a greater influence on what we’re able to do.

“Coming back I have a lot more confidence in my own ability and what I’m able to do. But I was definitely still nervous, I felt like the new kid at school and even coming into the game I was quite nervous.”

It’s hard to see the arc of history when you’re in the middle of it, but it’s worth remembering how much had changed for Cleary in his two years between Origin appearances.

From the 2023 series opener to the 2025 equivalent, Penrith won two more premierships and Cleary played what might always be the greatest 20 minutes of football in his entire life.

He cannot be the same player because too much has happened to him, but Cleary’s performance at Lang Park fits in well with his middle years of Origin football, which happened as he was building that legacy with Penrith, which is as towering as it is undeniable.

His form for New South Wales from 2020, the year everything changed, is harder to parse because there is enough of everything to twist reality into anything you want it to be.

His exemplary play in the 2021 series, where he helped steer the Blues to two of the most dominant wins in Origin history, is offset by the series losses in 2020 and 2022, which is then complicated given Cleary was a deserving choice for man of the match in each of New South Wales wins in those series, which came by near record margins, and around and around it goes because in Origin more than anywhere else in rugby league, we turn a team game into an individual sport.

Likewise, his efforts in Game I proved a lightning rod. He played a role in each of New South Wales’ four tries, straightening the attack particularly well for Brian To’o’s try and Zac Lomax’s second score, and he ran the ball directly and well.

Of all the things to come under the microscope, goalkicking would have been the least likely — Cleary is literally the most accurate kicker in first-grade history — but it did after he went one from four from the tee. He couldn’t sleep afterwards thinking about it.

That game, like Cleary’s Origin journey as a whole, does not fit neatly into the boxes we make for our interstate heroes. None of them really do, until we retrofit it after the fact to flatten out and simplify their greatness, sanding out the rough edges and fine details so it fits more neatly into our memories.

Johns is the best playmaker the Blues have ever had but he did not start at halfback for all three games of a winning series until eight years after his Origin debut. Peter Sterling has the most man-of-the-match awards of any player in New South Wales history and he only won a single series.

Ricky Stuart, who is currently tied with Cleary for most matches won as a Blues halfback (they’re also the only two Blues halfbacks to play more than 10 games and have a winning record), had an Origin career that only lasted five years due to the Super League war.

Laurie Daley and Brett Kenny, who both have a claim to be the best player New South Wales ever had, were only judged best on ground in an Origin game once each.

None of this denigrates their legacies — if anything, it enhances them because it creates a fuller, truer picture and because peaks are made more towering by the valleys from which they rise. Ask for perfection, even from your memories, and you’re asking to be let down.

Cleary would never ask to be put in the company of those legends. That would tempt a terrible fate. But by the virtue of his accomplishments, and the fact he could have another five series or more to play if injury permits, means that is what he’ll be measured against, for better and for worse.

That’s why his part in this side is changing and why, if the Blues can wrap up the series on Wednesday night in Perth, it could mark the beginning of a third and final stage of Cleary’s Origin career, one which could have the longest of tails.

A halfback must always be a leader — Cleary was first made vice-captain of the Blues when he was just 22- but that’s not the same as being a senior player. He’s a young veteran — but a veteran nonetheless, and that changes things. There is less to prove even if there’s more to do.

It’s a transition Cleary began with Penrith this year and one he’s trying to bring to Origin with a slightly different bent. At the Panthers, he is mentoring players who grew up watching him but for New South Wales he is tasked with leading other leaders.

“I’ve been challenged as a leader (for Penrith), trying to get around younger guys and inexperienced guys to help them get the best out of themselves but also for them to feel confidence and not that they have to fill the jersey of guys like Jarome Luai and James Fisher-Harris,” Cleary said.

“As much as the start of the year has been a bit of a challenge I really do believe it’s going to benefit me in the future with leadership and the way I play.

“You come in here and you’re surrounded by guys who are experienced at NRL level but Origin is a different arena.

“They all bring their own leadership qualities, it’s nice to rub shoulders with leaders at other clubs and understand their ideologies and combine to be a greater force.”

Cleary’s certainty there are still changes to come for his game, things he can learn and improve on and implement at all levels, is striking.

The greatest football careers are never completed — they are abandoned. The best players never feel as though they are fully formed even if they seem it to the outside.

There is no finished product for Cleary, no endpoint on the winding path he started almost ten years ago now.

That thinking has carried him through the ups and downs of Origin for the past seven years and as a new era potentially dawns for him in sky blue it will do the same for some time to come.