Nathan Cleary has no worlds left to conquer after Dally M win

Source : ABC NEWS

As Nathan Cleary sat on his couch, in between surgeries with his first Dally M medal around his neck on Wednesday night, the secret of his victory was that he didn’t need it to prove his greatness.

That has been beyond dispute for some time now. It’s very hard to argue otherwise against Cleary’s four-straight premierships, five grand final appearances and two Clive Churchill Medals. 

He and Cooper Cronk are the only halfbacks this century to win four titles, and he’s the only halfback in history, and one of just three players, to win multiple man of the match awards in grand finals.

It’s the same in rep football. His record for Australia is perfect, literally — the Kangaroos have won all eight games Cleary’s played for them.

Cleary’s time with New South Wales hasn’t always been as smooth, and before this season it was the last thing his critics could point to because it was the only frontier left he had not totally dominated.

But if those same critics are still holding on, they’re the rugby league version of the Japanese soldiers who hid out in the jungle for decades after World War II, refusing to admit the war was lost.

After his play in this year’s series, where he became the third player ever — after Cameron Smith and Wally Lewis — to win two man of the match awards in one series en route to masterminding the Blues win in the Lang Park decider and claim his first player of the series award, his play for the Blues is now also beyond rebuke.

If all that wasn’t enough, a Dally M wasn’t going to make a difference either, even if it is richly deserved and now gives Cleary a complete set of all the major individual awards the NRL has to offer; at 28, he has no worlds left to conquer.

Cleary’s 29 try assists this season marked a new career high as were his 14 line breaks, way up from his prior best of nine.

His 62 tackle busts were also his best-ever mark, and he led the league in goal-kicking percentage among full-time kickers while all the other heralds of his game — the boot that alternates between booming and clever, the roughneck physicality and on-field generalship — were constantly at the fore as Penrith stormed to the minor premiership.

When a player has been as good at club level for as long as Cleary has, it can be hard for individual seasons to stand out, but there’s a reason nobody dared predict that anyone but him would take the medal home on Wednesday night.

Simply put, it’s been the best year of his NRL career, and given he’s been counted as one of the best players in the league for more than half a decade now, that’s really saying something.

That first year he proved himself worthy of such a title also marked the closest he’d come to the Dally M before.

Back in 2020, when he and Penrith were first ascending via a regular season of 19 wins and one loss, Cleary was the hot favourite to win the medal but finished third behind Clint Gutherson and winner Jack Wighton.

Wighton won the award with Canberra’s penultimate game of the season, where he earned three votes in a 26-14 win over the Warriors.

Wighton set up a try but did little else of note besides being sin-binned. Elliott Whitehead, who was forced to play in the halves when Canberra halfback George Williams was sidelined due to an HIA and Wighton was in the bin, was the clear choice for best on ground but only received two votes.

Likewise, Gutherson was awarded two points in Parramatta’s Round 1 over Canterbury, an 8-2 struggle where he did not score a try, set one up or make a line break.

He worked hard, running for over 200 metres, but in a game of such fine margins it would have been easy for the vote to go another way.

The details of forgotten Raiders and Eels wins from years past — the Parramatta match was so long ago it still had two referees and predates the set restart rule — seemingly have little to do with Nathan Cleary’s story, but this is how the Dally M’s work.

The 3-2-1 voting system invites inconsistency, especially since an extra judge was appointed for each game and, given that said judges are anonymous, accountability is impossible.

One bad decision from one voter, just once, can decide the award and dictate how we talk about a player’s legacy and place in history.

The flip side is a player doesn’t need a Dally M to be considered an all-time great. Darren Lockyer, Brad Fittler, Allan Langer and Benji Marshall all never won one and because it’s only been the official player of the year award since 1998, Andrew Johns is the only Immortal who’s ever won it.

Even before Wednesday night, Cleary could exist in that mighty company and not feel ashamed.

He has achieved as much as any of them and more than some, and can match accolades with any player of modern times, including Johnathan Thurston (who won four Dally M’s) and Johns himself (who won three).

This medal is not a validation or culmination. It is an affirmation, a glittering reminder of a truth we all knew already.

There’s a reason Cleary’s fitness dominated the talk leading into the preliminary final against Newcastle. There’s a reason his every move on the bench was dissected like it was the Zapruder film.

There’s a reason the world seemed to stop when he suffered a compound fracture to his ankle following Phoenix Crossland’s hip drop tackle and there’s a reason his absence was felt so keenly, first through the final 45 minutes of Penrith’s upset loss and right to the Dally M ceremony on Wednesday night.

He has the rugby league world in his hands, and he has for many years now. This era belongs to him more than it does to anybody else.

That was true before he was a Dally M winner and will remain true wherever his career goes next as he returns from his shocking ankle injury.

Where that is and what he does when he gets there remains to be seen.

All that’s certain is that now he’s ticked this final box: whatever spoils of war come his way are repeats.

There’s long been nothing left to prove; now there’s nothing new left to win.

The Dally M is one more thing on the pile of gold, a pile so large the medal could be lost amongst the glittering.