{"id":908709,"date":"2026-09-28T15:38:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/908709\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T15:38:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:38:21","slug":"nrl-nrlw-news-2026-rlpa-players-champions-tamika-upton-and-nathan-cleary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/908709\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL, NRLW news 2026: RLPA players champions; Tamika Upton and Nathan Cleary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathan Cleary<\/a> and Tamika Upton have both claimed their second RLPA<\/a> player of the year awards as the latter prepares for a back-to-back charge at the NRLW<\/a> title. <\/p>\n

Cleary beat out Erin Clark, Herbie Farnworth, Haumole Olakau\u2019atu and James Tedesco for his award, which was announced to the Panthers squad before the preliminary final last week. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tamika Upton.\u00a0NRL Imagery<\/p>\n

The Panthers halfback last won the award in 2020 and becomes the third player to win multiple player of the year titles. James Tedesco and Johnathan Thurston have both won the award four times. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe expectations on Nathan are always very high. But in 2026 he showed once again that he can carry that pressure and produce quality performance after quality performance,\u201d RLPA chief executive Clint Newton said. <\/p>\n

\u201cDefined by his toughness as a halfback, Nathan\u2019s all-round game has been astounding this year. Whether it be setting up tries or linebreaks, or his tactical and attacking kicking game, Nathan has been on another level in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe proudly recognise Nathan Cleary as the Players\u2019 Champion for 2026. He is a phenomenal and gifted player, a great leader and a quality human. <\/p>\n

\u201c… Lastly, I just want to send my thoughts to Nathan and his family after sustaining a brutal injury in the preliminary final. I wish you all the best in your recovery, and we know you will fight your way back on the playing field as soon as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Upton, it\u2019s her second consecutive player of the year award making her the first-ever two-time winner. <\/p>\n

The Broncos<\/a> fullback finished the regular season with 20 try assists, 20 line breaks and 20 line break assists. She was first in the league for the first two stats and equal first for the line break assists. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty special,\u201d she said on Nine\u2019s 100% Footy.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, you go out there and battle a lot of these girls, and you can\u2019t vote for your own teammates so I think with this award comes a bit of privilege. <\/p>\n

\u201cI respect the hell out of a lot of these girls and it\u2019s nice to know that respect goes both ways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nathan Cleary and Tamika Upton have both claimed their second RLPA player of the year awards as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-908709","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\/908709","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=908709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}