In between piling up points, try assists and cut-out balls like a hoarder on A Current Affair, Nathan Cleary has fronted reporters with the same regularity, and the same singular focus throughout his three-week-old Kangaroos career.
The great halfback battle of our time.
With little else to talk about by week three of the Rugby League World Cup, one scribe started spinning the yarn from one of the great halfback battles of yesteryear.
When Tommy Raudonikis tossed Steve Mortimer’s bag out of their shared hotel room in 1977 for claiming the double bed, offering to “shit in your bed, you know I will” if Mortimer wanted to argue the fact.
Cleary helped finish the tale with a grin. But such is Cleary’s nature and the bonhomie in Australian camp, he’d make Daly Cherry-Evans’ bed for him if the veteran asked nicely.
Now Cleary has ascended the throne as starting halfback against Italy with Cherry-Evans covering bench utility duties, the prize-winning Panther could well be there for the best part of the next decade.
There’s a fair chance Mal Meninga will carry this first-choice spine of James Tedesco (29), Cameron Munster (28), Cleary and Harry Grant (both 24) into and beyond the 2025 World Cup in France given the form and standing of all four.
Kangaroos assistant coach Michael Hagan, observer of Andrew Johns, Danny Buderus, Cameron Smith and Johnathan Thurston among others in his time, is already seeing similarities between those last two and Australia’s current halfback and hooker.
“In game situations and at training, they look like they’ve been playing together for years at this World Cup even though they come from different NRL clubs – Penrith and Melbourne – and are opponents when it comes time for State of Origin,” Hagan wrote in his weekly column for The Roar.
“Just like Johnathan Thurston and Cameron Smith when they teamed up together at Origin level with Queensland in 2005 and then with Australia a year later, Cleary and Grant have got the chance to forge a similar combination as Australia’s long-term halfback and hooker.”
Michael Hagan sees similarities between the combination of Nathan Cleary and Harry Grant, and Queensland champions Cameron Smith and Johnathan Thurston.Credit:Fairfax Media
It’s a telling assessment given Meninga has spoken openly of trying to bring the introverted Cleary out of his shell in Australian camp.
Halves partner Munster has taken to the task with relish. It’s a similar dynamic to that enjoyed by Cleary with Jarome Luai – the outgoing, running playmaker he’s known since their mid-teens.
Plenty around Kangaroos camp, including Cleary himself, acknowledge that he’s still finding his feet in a different, elite environment, having made a second home and won two titles in Penrith’s structured excellence.
It’s taken him time in the Origin arena. Top-shelf kick pressure from Queensland and Melbourne at club level can still find Cleary wanting, and there’s little doubt the formidable New Zealand pack that awaits in the semi-final are planning exactly that.
Nathan Cleary scored 28 points in his Kangaroos debut.Credit:Getty
Cherry-Evans remains only an injury away from reclaiming the halfback gig in what is a representative career that is rarely given its dues.
He’s often criticised for speaking like a politician because he sometimes does. But he’s offered some candid insight over the years too when it comes to 10 years in and out of Origin and Test sides.
In 2017, he told me “my rep career right now is non-existent” amid persistent rumours of a falling out with Queensland’s senior players.
Eighteen months later he returned for the Maroons and revealed afterwards that tactical and footy conversations with the likes of Smith, Thurston, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk were “going straight over my head. I had no idea what they were talking about”.
With the greatest respect to Cherry-Evans, Cleary doesn’t have that issue between the ears.
Finding his voice has been one of few challenges to emerge more than once throughout Cleary’s already glittering career.
Once he does that in green and gold, the next great halfback battle will be light years away.
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