{"id":662141,"date":"2026-05-10T16:25:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T16:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/662141\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T16:25:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T16:25:22","slug":"state-of-origin-2026-dylan-edwards-nsw-fullback-spot-ivan-cleary-and-nathan-cleary-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/662141\/","title":{"rendered":"State of Origin 2026 | Dylan Edwards NSW fullback spot; Ivan Cleary and Nathan Cleary comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panthers<\/a> coach Ivan Cleary<\/a> has left no doubt around who he believes should wear the NSW Blues No.1 jersey after Dylan Edwards<\/a>‘ stunning form continued against the Raiders.<\/p>\n

Edwards is currently locked in a battle for the fullback position with James Tedesco, who has also put the competition on notice. <\/p>\n

Against the Raiders on Sunday afternoon, Edwards finished with 254 run metres and seven breaks while helping to setup his side’s defence to stop any late Raiders surge.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Maroons spot up for grabs as ‘ridiculous’ Ponga plan squashed<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Exposed’ Magpies urged to stick with controversial plan<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Doing really well’: Mal remains bullish amid Bears criticism<\/a><\/p>\n

His Panthers and NSW teammate Nathan Cleary was asked about Edwards in the post-match press conference and described him as “super reliable” and a “great teammate”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nathan and Ivan Cleary in the post-match press conference.\u00a0NRL<\/p>\n

His dad, Ivan, unprompted, added to that. <\/p>\n

“Couldn’t agree more, I thought Dyl was outstanding today,” he said.<\/p>\n

“When the ball’s in play, the fullback’s under pressure a lot and he never flinched once. He came up with some huge plays, ran the ball all day<\/p>\n

“If we’re talking about taking Dyl Edwards out of the Origin team, then they must be doing well, I’ll just say that.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ivan Cleary smirks. \u00a0NRL<\/p>\n

Ivan smirked when he made the final comment, in a clear indication of what he thinks Blues coach Laurie Daley should do.<\/p>\n

Watch the 2026 NRL season live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When considering the form of Tedesco, Ivan went back to the time Edwards replaced him in the 2024 series. <\/p>\n

“I said this a couple of weeks ago, Teddy’s playing incredible footy but he always has,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There was a decision made for Dyl to come in and replace him. Since then he hasn’t done much wrong, he was part of the team that won the series in 2024.<\/p>\n

“Last year he came in off the back of shoulder surgery, in fairness I probably pushed him too early and he struggled a bit. Still you wouldn’t say the series was lost because of him and he still ended up playing in a prelim and made the Australian team.<\/p>\n

“This year he’s prepared like he probably has years ago and he’s been one of our best top three players every week.<\/p>\n

“He presides over the best defensive team from five of the last six years, that’s probably something you wouldn’t notice.”<\/p>\n

“Have I talked him up enough?” he added with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Ivan went on to say the conundrum for Daley is a “good problem” but Edwards is right now close to career best form. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Panthers coach Ivan Cleary has left no doubt around who he believes should wear the NSW Blues No.1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-662141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}