news.com.au\u2019s Extended Bench<\/a>, he said: \u201cCleary has played in Origins, he\u2019s won Origins, he\u2019s won prems. He\u2019s done that. People are putting it on the onus of \u2018He needs to have a game where he just stands miles above\u2019. I don\u2019t think you necessarily have to do that.<\/p>\n\u201cYou can have good players around you. There\u2019s no downfall to you not being miles above on your own as this player who had the best. All you need to do is get the side moving, get the side doing what it\u2019s doing, bring guys into it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a half your job is to bring out the strengths in your teammates. If they\u2019re coming into opportunities and they\u2019ve got space then you\u2019re doing your job.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone expects Nath to have this game like an Andrew Johns moment. I don\u2019t think it needs to be like that. There\u2019s a bit of undue pressure around that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019ll play well, he\u2019s in as good a spot as any. He\u2019s already been a part of winning Origin series. He\u2019s done everything so I don\u2019t buy into \u2018He hasn\u2019t fully owned Origin yet\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last week, Cleary opened up about how last year\u2019s defeat in the Origin decider has only increased his desire to put things right this time around.<\/p>\n
![\"NSW](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1311ae6fea9e09fc4e5646ac3ba42728.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never nice losing, but particularly such a big game being a game three Origin at home as well,\u201d he said in camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was devastating, I can\u2019t lie. But you\u2019ve sort of just got to pick yourself back up, dust yourself off, move forward, and get better.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no point sort of sulking about it and feeling sorry for yourself. Here we are a year on, and I\u2019m hoping I can use those lessons to play better.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019ve got to grow from it. You can\u2019t live in the past too much, but you can learn from it. That pain is definitely a sort of burning fire there.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I sort of used that last year to try and just get better as a person and as a player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally published as \u2018I don\u2019t buy it\u2019: NRL great\u2018s bold Cleary call ahead of Origin opener<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NRL great Jimmy Maloney has hit back at critics of Nathan Cleary\u2019s performances in State of Origin series\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-697668","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\/697668","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=697668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}