- Tane Edmed met with NRL star Nathan Cleary
- Rugby star was having trouble ‘switching off’
- Says Penrith star’s advice has helped him
NSW Waratahs five-eighth Tane Edmed has revealed that he’s benefited greatly from some advice given to him from four-time NRL premiership winner Nathan Cleary.
Edmed, 24, had an outstanding finish to 2024 on the pitch – but he’s the first to admit he’s had trouble not thinking about football when he’s off it.
Ahead of the upcoming Super Rugby season, the playmaker sat down for a coffee with Cleary to pick the Penrith champion’s brain about finding balance in his life.
‘I still go to bed thinking about scrum set-ups or something ridiculous,’ Edmed told The Sydney Morning Herald. ‘There are just slides in your head.
‘Something I’m trying to do now, which I actually picked up from Nathan Cleary – I had a coffee with him in the pre-season just to talk about how he goes about things – he tries to keep everything at the facility.
Waratahs five-eighth Tane Edmed (pictured) says he’s benefited from advice from NRL star Nathan Cleary
Edmed sat down for a coffee with the four-time NRL premiership winner
‘So, watch training, analyze training, learn all the plays, talk to your coaches … it then means I’m leaving here [Waratahs training] a lot later, but it also means that when I get home, I’m home.’
Edmed, the son of NRL great Steve Edmed, said Cleary was also interested in hearing about how they did things in rugby.
‘He definitely was just as interested in how we go about things and how I go about things and that’s what I recognised in myself, he just wants to get better,’ Edmed said.
‘He’s really intrigued at how he can get better, how he can change things, and he’s obviously found a lot of the answers.
‘I mean, he’s won four competitions in a row, which is crazy. He’s probably three years ahead of me in terms of age, and he seems like he’s found a lot of the answers, so I just want to find out what they were.’
Edmed capped off an impressive 2024 with a call-up for the Wallabies, after playing for North Harbour in New Zealand’s National Provincial Competition.
Unfortunately his debut lasted just three minutes due to a head knock while playing Ireland.
‘You dream about your debut, and you never think of something like that happening,’ he said.
Cleary told Edmed that he leaves footy ‘at the facility’ and relaxes when he back at home
the NSW playmaker made his Wallabies debut on the spring tour against Ireland
‘The two days after, I was pretty shaken up – pretty devastated, to be honest. It didn’t feel like I thought it would.
‘But then when I got off the plane, I realised what I’d done. I saw my old man, he picked me up from the airport, and then it started to hit me a little bit – like, “You’re a Wallaby”. It didn’t go the way I wanted, but I started to feel a lot better about it.’
