Nathan Cleary is the best club footballer of his generation, but he remains an unfulfilled Origin halfback.
At Penrith, Cleary is ruthless, controlled and tactically superior to everyone he faces.
He has won multiple premierships, dominated grand finals, and dragged his team out of holes that seemed impossible.
The 2023 grand final against Brisbane wasn’t just a great performance; it was mythology in real time. I remember watching it live, glued to the screen. It was a player refusing to follow the emerging script, instead taking the game by the throat and changing its course.
So let’s establish something before the outrage machine fires up: this is not an argument that Cleary is overrated. It’s an argument that State of Origin isn’t just club football with better jerseys. Cleary is Origin calibre; he just isn’t an Origin great, which isn’t good enough given the standard he has set everywhere else.
Yet NSW keeps making the same mistake: picking Cleary over Mitchell Moses as halfback, then selecting Moses out of position at five-eighth. In Origin, there can only be one team master. Too many cooks spoil the broth.
I hope Cleary proves me wrong on Wednesday night, commencing a new era in which he dominates Origin, delivering NSW multiple series victories on the trot. But if history is anything to go by, he won’t, even if NSW manages to eke out a victory despite another underwhelming performance by the NRL’s best generational player.
The Blues, when selecting teams, look at club form, club reputations and club dominance, assuming it all scales up to Origin. Queensland, on the other hand, understands what NSW too often forgets: Origin is a different contest. It’s faster, more brutal and far less forgiving. It doesn’t care who looks most polished across 27 rounds. It only cares who can impose themselves when structures collapse and time evaporates.
NSW keeps making the same mistake: picking Nathan Cleary (left) over Mitchell Moses (right) as halfback, then selecting Moses out of position at five-eighth. In Origin, there can only be one team master. Too many cooks spoil the broth
Cleary’s genius is built on control. Penrith’s system gives him rhythm, field position and repeat opportunities. He squeezes opponents until they crack. He has Isaah Yeo as a second brain, an edge structure he knows well, and a pack that lets him dictate terms.
At Origin level, none of those things are guaranteed. Everyone is elite. At Origin level, Cleary has too often been a game-manager, not a game-breaker, lacking time and space. Cleary has lost more series than he’s won.
He’s had solid games, sure. But solid is not the standard for a player of his calibre, and Cleary would be the first to acknowledge that. Not when he is the undisputed king of the club game. Not when NSW builds so much of its hope around him each year.
Peter Sterling dominated club football with the Parramatta team he had around him, but the great 1980s halfback has admitted that he came up short at Origin level. That is why Steve Mortimer became that generation’s Origin hero for NSW.
Neither of them matched Wally Lewis, of course, who successfully ran the show for Queensland from five-eighth.
NSW needs Cleary to make Queensland feel exactly what Brisbane felt in that 2023 grand final: the terrifying realisation that the game is slipping away simply because he has decided it will. But the Penrith playmaker just hasn’t shown he can do that consistently (or even inconsistently) in Origin.
I hope Cleary (pictured with girlfriend Mary Fowler) proves me wrong on Wednesday night, commencing a new era in which he dominates Origin, delivering NSW multiple series victories on the trot. But if history is anything to go by, he won’t
All of NSW wishes he could. But wishing it doesn’t make it so, and if NSW loses game one, the selectors need to axe Cleary to allow Moses to get the job done.
I don’t write any of this with glee. I’ve supported NSW my whole life, and am a rugby league tragic who (much to the frustration of my family) watches every NRL game most weeks. And by all accounts, Cleary comes across as one of the good guys of the game, which makes it harder to criticise him. I hope my reputation for the kiss of death when making political predictions transfers into the sphere of rugby league now that I’ve written this, but I despair that it won’t.
Which brings us back to the heresy nobody wants to speak that I’ve already mentioned: Moses is the better Origin halfback.
Not the better player, or the greater footballer with the better track record. Not the man you build a club franchise around. But the better Origin halfback. That is the distinction NSW seems incapable of making.
Moses plays with a sharper, nastier edge. His kicking game can change the geometry of an Origin match, not by slowly accumulating pressure, but by shifting the entire field in a single set. In 2024, after NSW lost game one, Moses didn’t just fill a vacancy; he took control. Man of the match in game two, a match-sealing try in the decider at Suncorp (I was there watching in awe). He delivered NSW the series from a position where the Blues looked in deep trouble.
When Cleary has been in similar positions over the years, he has too often been found wanting.
Moses (pictured with wife Bri Gardoni) suited Origin’s brutal simplicity when NSW won with him at the helm in 2024
When NSW won with Moses at the helm in 2024, it wasn’t because he looked perfectly rounded. It was because he suited Origin’s brutal simplicity: kick long, run hard, challenge the line, and force the contest onto your terms, whether the prepared structure held up or not. And importantly, he did it with a running five-eighth, which helped produce the win.
Pairing two elite organisers invites the exact uncertainty Queensland feeds off. The Maroons love nothing more than a NSW side still negotiating roles after the national anthem is played.
Moses should be the main man, with a running five-eighth outside him. Not another organiser competing for the same job. Someone who makes defenders hesitate, who plays square, who asks questions with his legs. Asking Moses to do a version of that, playing outside Cleary as second fiddle, only compounds the initial error.
Queensland leaves out wonderful players when they don’t fit the blueprint. NSW too often treats Origin jerseys as rewards for club excellence, shuffling players out of position in the process, then wonders why Queensland wins the Origin contest more often than not.
If NSW does find a way to win game one despite Cleary rather than because of him, they will no doubt retain the champion club halfback. But it would be a mistake.
