Nathan Cleary shoulder injury: Blues star faces real chance of reinjury

Nathan Cleary may have fooled the Maroons in Origin II, but he’d be a fool to ignore the implications of his shoulder injury for the remainder of 2021.

Nathan Cleary with shoulder iced in post-match Origin II presser

Nathan Cleary had Queensland fooled at Suncorp Stadium but the NSW halfback will not be able to hide from the reality his shoulder will “almost 100 per cent” pop out again, a leading NRL doctor has warned.

For 70 minutes in Sunday night’s Origin II, Cleary played with a labrum tear after partially dislocating his right shoulder.

Penrith medical staff have opted to delay surgery in the hope Cleary can return to the field in four to six weeks, in time for the side’s premiership charge.

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Nathan Cleary with shoulder iced in the post-match Origin II presser.

Dr Ameer Ibrahim, who famously nursed halfback Cooper Cronk’s fractured scapula in the Sydney Roosters’ 2018 grand final victory, believes Cleary’s shoulder could cause problems this season.

“It’s almost 100 per cent chance it’ll happen again, and that’s the hard bit,” Dr Ibrahim said.

“It's the mental game now. Does he second guess himself when he goes into a tackle, does he stop himself throwing his arm out?

“If he is centimetres short of the tryline, does he reach out with his arm?”

Dr Ibrahim is also a consultant physician with the Newcastle Knights and last season treated fullback Kalyn Ponga’s shoulder injury – one not too dissimilar to what Cleary suffered in the Blues’ 26-nill win.

Like Ponga, Cleary will inevitably have to go under the knife to fix the labrum tear, which will significantly decrease the chance of the injury happening again.

“I think it‘s about a three per cent rate dislocation right after surgery,” Dr Ibrahim said.

Cleary is expecting rival defenders to target him next time he takes the field.

“The biggest scare about the shoulder won’t actually be the tackling, it’ll be landing on it awkwardly. I’ll be putting in the reps to make sure I’m ready to go.

“You have to expect teams to target me, but I’m up for the challenge,” Nathan said.

In a testament to Cleary’s resilience, not even Penrith teammate and Maroons centre Kurt Capewell realised the 23-year old had dislocated his shoulder.

“I spoke to Capes yesterday and he said that he didn’t even know,“ Nathan said.

“That was probably a lucky thing. I was a little bit worried about big David Fifita there trying to expose me.

“Hopefully surgery never comes around, that would be the best case scenario.

“I’ll be giving myself the best opportunity to get my shoulder right and get back to playing footy again.

“As far as I’m concerned I‘ll be back playing footy this year.”

If it wasn’t for Cleary’s ‘smarts’, Penrith coach Ivan Cleary believes his son’s injury would have been a whole lot worse.

Cleary is reluctant to heap praise on his son but can‘t look past the 23-year old’s heroics in NSW’s series win last Sunday night.

“I’m loathed to give my son too many raps … I’m extremely proud of that performance. It will pay him back in the long run but sets a standard for our team,“ Ivan said.

“It was a bit of old fashioned toughness.

Nathan Cleary offloads just before being hit by Kurt Capewell. Picture: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

“He could only tackle with one shoulder for the rest of the game, if the Queensland team were aware of that, he would have been targeted or had to come off because he would not have been able to do his job properly.

“He knew it was important he didn’t show he was injured because then he would be targeted … I think he almost fooled the NSW medical staff too because not sure they knew too much about it either.”

While this is Cleary‘s first shoulder injury, father Ivan said he was plagued with them during his playing career.

Ivan is hoping son Nathan has not suffered the same genetic fate.

“I had shoulders like a brown snake, I had plenty of shoulder problems, it’s in my family I think so I think he must get the strong shoulders from his mother’s side,“ Ivan said.

“Most of the good stuff comes from his mother’s side.”

Dr Ibrahim agreed that some players can have a predisposition to certain injuries.

“People are either sort of really tight or really loose and floppy. That tends to be genetic, whether your joints are tight or floppy … if you tend to be on the floppy and you’ve got someone in the family that’s got lax ligaments, that can predispose to shoulder popping,” Dr Ibrahim said.

Originally published as Nathan Cleary shoulder injury: Blues star faces real chance of reinjury