Paul Kent: Nathan Cleary’s shoulder injury twist has all the timing of a Hollywood movie
Ivan Cleary is the nearest he’s been to an NRL premiership, but can he do it without his son Nathan, whose shoulder injury is agonisingly close to ending his season?
Opinion
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OPENING SCENE:
A flashback. Four attractive young women arrive at a nondescript house in Penrith.
CUT TO:
A lounge room interior. A few drinks on a table. Two young men, clearly the residents, share a lounge. Music starts, a woman encourages one of the young men to get up and dance. The others quickly join them.
A mobile phone is produced. The vision is uploaded to TikTok …
CUT TO:
The NRL announcing sanctions, that the players are being fined for breaking Covid protocols.
FADE TO BLACK:
ACT I
Six months later. The players walk from the field, shoulders slumped, beaten grand finalists.
Celebrations are sombre.
CUT TO:
The Panthers are again in the headlines. Centre Brent Naden tests positive for cocaine.
Black headlines drift across the page. The club rallies around him.
Trent Barrett announces the Bulldogs have signed Matt Burton. He says the Panthers should release Burton to allow him to play first grade at Canterbury.
CUT TO:
“Are you serious?” asks Greg Alexander when some boofhead on NRL360 questions why the Panthers do not release him.
The Panthers make it clear they are building a premiership team.
Flash to scoreboards, the Panthers are beating the Storm 12-10, the Raiders 30-10, the Rabbitohs 56-12 …
Scenes are being set.
More celebrations.
The Panthers are announcing themselves as young and cocky. Over the top try celebrations both exhilarate and aggravate.
The team, 12 months removed from TikTok, is developing, brash and confident and highly skilled.
They play a young man’s style. Men in motion all over the field.
They ditch the set-up plays, the traditional “settler”, to have shots at teams for tackle after tackle.
Meanwhile, around the League, teams are falling.
The Roosters suffer one injury, then another, until they break their tipping point and begin to gather unexpected losses.
Souths suffer two 50-point losses.
Only Melbourne remain firm.
Melbourne and Penrith, on a remarkable run without injury.
ACT II
The Panthers are flying. Leading the competition.
Cut to scenes of them winning, celebrating. Brian To’o walks into training, a beatbox on his shoulders.
THE TURNING POINT
No drama ever goes directly from start to finish. There has to be struggles, obstacles to overcome.
Without it, there is no narrative tension.
Coach Ivan Cleary knows this now. It becomes part of the journey.
It could be no other way for Penrith. They have been the headline story all season long.
The wins keep coming, 12 in a row to start the season.
Then, right on time, halfway through their movie the turning point arrives.
Origin is being played, and without seven Origin players the Panthers lose to Wests Tigers. The following week they fall to Cronulla.
CUT TO:
Victorious Wests Tigers supporters giving Ivan Cleary their Leichhardt welcome.
Cleary remains unconcerned. In the dressing room afterwards he can easily put the loss down to his missing stars.
CUT TO:
Origin II at Suncorp Stadium. Nathan Cleary goes into a tackle and gets up gingerly, his shoulder limp.
In the grandstand Ivan recognises it immediately. His son, his team’s star player, suffers what might be a season-ending injury.
A partial dislocation of the shoulder, specialists checking whether the labrum has torn and loosened pressure in the shoulder. A tear almost guarantees it will continue dislocating if there is no surgery.
Slowly, the subplot emerges.
CUT TO:
Ivan Cleary in his lounge room, the room flickering blue light with the television in the background.
The sound is turned down, he is barely watching.
We realise he is out of his usual setting. Here now, we see the father, a man alone in his thoughts.
An operation would heal his son. Make him close to perfect again.
But an operation would mean a four-to-six-month recovery and, almost certainly, his season over.
Cleary looks at his phone, sees the Panthers second on the ladder, equal first with Melbourne.
Beaten in two grand finals, a man who has coached more than 350 games, he has gone more than 100 games past the record for most games coached before winning a premiership.
That, he knows, says history is against him.
His eyes drift to a nearby shelf, a family photo with his wife and his daughter and, there too, his son Nathan.
Pass by the operation, though, and as the coach he knows he retains his chief playmaker. Most likely until the end of the season, when the finals come.
He realises this is his best chance yet to win that premiership.
Fathers coaching sons are always a complex dynamic in sports stories. Always the same question, where does the coach end, and the father begin?
No operation and he plays on, and the Panthers are firm contenders.
This season is the best opportunity he has.
CUT TO:
Nathan enters the lounge room. He tells Ivan he will see specialists in the coming days.
The worst-case scenario is an immediate operation. But, he believes, the most likely outcome will be rehabilitation and playing in pain.
Ivan looks at his son.
CUT TO:
Nathan Cleary in a physio room, stretching rubber bands to begin repairing his shoulder.
CUT TO:
Nathan in a gym, light dumbbells slowly morph into heavier dumbbells, showing his improvement.
CUT TO:
The Blues wrap up the series with a third win in Newcastle. Nathan is watching from the sideline.
He joins with the team, and celebrates with them, a historical team.
CUT TO:
The jerseys of Luai, Yeo, To’o, Martin, transform from NSW Blues to Panthers black.
They are in a dressing room, weeks on from their Origin victory.
In the corner we see a figure squeezing a jersey down his back … revealing the number seven.
He turns, the camera pans up, to reveal Nathan Cleary.
He is back, toughing it out with his teammates around him.
From outside there is a knock at the door.
We hear the ground manager’s voice from behind the door: “Come on, Penrith,”
And the players file into line, behind number seven.
Act Three is about to begin …
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Originally published as Paul Kent: Nathan Cleary’s shoulder injury twist has all the timing of a Hollywood movie
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