Nathan Cleary and the art of kicking ’em to death

Penrith co-captain Nathan Cleary talks about putting the boot into Parramatta in Sunday’s NRL grand final.

Nathan Cleary puts boot to ball in the Panthers’ preliminary final win over Souths. Picture: Getty Images.

Andrew Johns was leaving a State of Origin training session. The team bus was about 40 metres away. The door was open. Johns juggled three white footballs like they were ten-pins in a circus act and then he said “watch this”.

He threw two of the balls away. Took a glimpse at the door. Put his right boot to the third ball. It went end-over-end like one of Tyson Stengle’s goals in the AFL grand final. Sailed straight through the door. This was a while ago and I can’t remember exactly what Johns said while running off and laughing himself silly.

Piece of cake, piece of piss, something like that. I imagined the ball was in a seat and sipping on a Gatorade by the time Johns joined it on the bus, such was his mastery of the art of kicking.

It was the best trick I’d seen from a footballer until Nathan Cleary started fooling around at a Penrith training session this week. Watch this. He has a couple of balls in his hands, flicking them in the air, letting them bounce back to his chest like he’s tugging on the strings of a yo-yo.

All his kicks looked different. Grubbers spin left then right, or right then left, or they roll dead straight, or they take a wobble, or they stop stone dead. No shanks.

His drop-goals sail over the black dot like he’s smoothing sand wedges on a golf driving range. Head-high kicks to the corners are punched like Cam Smith’s pitch-and-runs at St Andrews. They go high and low, front-ways, sideways. It’s all rather brilliant.

He’s in his own little world. Then comes the most crazily skilful kick I’ve seen since Johns nonchalantly put one through the front door of the Blues’ team bus.

Cleary’s about five metres from the goal line. To the left of the posts. He does a banana kick from the outside of a right foot covered by a fluorescent orange shoe. No chewy on this boot. Wicked spin makes the ball veer like an Eddie Charlton trick shot. It looks like a boomerang skimming across the turf. The ball goes past the left post and then curves to the right.

Nathan Cleary works on his kicking during the Penrith Panthers fan day and training session at BlueBet Stadium. Picture: Jonathan Ng.

And then it does a U-turn like it’s missed the sign for Mulgoa Rd. There’s so much spin that it goes backwards, back into the field of play. The ball finishes five metres from the goal line again, on the opposite side of the posts to Cleary. I imagined it running over and leaping into his arms if he whistles to it, such is his mastery of the art of kicking.

It’s the very definition of having the ball on a string. A prime example of the repertoire of the bloke who threatens to kick Parramatta to death in Sunday night’s grand final. I tell Cleary that Roger Federer had 46 variations on his forehand when all the spins and angles and depths were factored in. How many kicks do you have?

He curls his moustache and gets a glint in his eye and breaks into a half-smile and says “I’ve got a few”.

Take a proper stab. Give us a number. Twenty? Thirty? Forty-six? The number of all the stars in the sky? “Geez. I really don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think it’s that technical. Maybe it is? I’ve never thought about it like that. There’s a fair few but they’re split into different components. There’s the long kicking game. There’s high kicks. There’s the really high kicks. The short kicks.

“Cross-field kicks. All I really know is that a lot of work has gone into them so you’re 100 per cent ready for every situation you’ll get in a game. How many kicks are there? How many situations are there? There’s your answer.”

The art of kicking. Spur-of-the-moment or meticulous planning?

“Both,” he says. “How to kick it isn’t the thing. It’s about finding the right kick under the pressure of a big game. Making the right decision. How to do every kick is ingrained in your mind. You go into a game with your plans but then it’s still in a very quick moment that you have to choose one. Things happen so fast. You don’t always know what situation you’ll be in until you’re actually in it.

“And then you have to make the right choice. The actual process of kicking it is muscle memory and then instinct takes over.

“I’ve learned to trust my first instinct about which kick to do. I think I’ve developed a good feel for what works and when it can work in a game.”

Cleary practises a drop goal during at training this week. Picture: Getty Images.

He says: “Experience is invaluable. And a bit of success. This is our third grand final in a row. We’ve had some good results for a while now. The more you do a certain kick and the more times it works, the more confident you feel with it and you don’t think twice about doing it again. It starts to feel natural. All the preparation and training you put into it gives you peace of mind that you’re going to get it right under the sort of pressure you get in a game like Sunday night.”

The torpedo bomb is Cleary’s masterpiece. It goes unfathomably high. Drifts left and right on the way down. It’s extraordinarily difficult to catch.

Eels centre Waqa Blake had a horror night under Cleary’s rainmakers in the first week of the finals. He knows it’ll be bombs away again on Sunday night. How to prepare? “You can’t,” he says. Because no-one else can do them.

After the loss to the Panthers a month ago, Eels coach Brad Arthur said Cleary “kicked us to death.” The Eels ball boys said Cleary kicked ‘em to death. The Eels’ cheergirls said Cleary kicked ‘em to death. The bloke at the dressing room door said Cleary kicked ‘em to death. The kid at the Maccas drive-through on the way home said Cleary kicked ‘em to death. Everyone says it. Cleary? Kicks us to death.

“I don’t really care about that side of it,” he says. “I don’t get that much of a thrill about other people talking about it. The thrill for me is seeing all the practice paying off and working on the field. That’s the enjoyment I get from it. All I’m trying to do is get the best out of myself. Do the right thing by the team.”

Let’s get nerdy. What’s the technical side? Talk us through the torpedo bomb.

“In terms of my hands, I don’t even really know where they go,” he says. “That’s the muscle-memory part. The main idea is to drop the ball so it’s perfectly horizontal. That’s the biggest thing. Doesn’t work without that being perfect. You kick through the belly of the ball and that’s what makes it float, if not spiral a bit.

“When you hit it good and you know it’s come off nice, it’s like the feeling you get when you hit a good drive at golf. Not that I hit a good drive very often but with the high kick, you get the same feeling of hitting off the sweet spot. Right off the middle of your boot and right on the middle of the ball. It’s such a satisfying feeling when you see it hanging in the air. You’re thinking, ‘are they going to catch it? What’s going to happen here?’ Because something normally happens, I guess.”

How to become a great kicker? Do a lot of kicking. “If you ask mum and dad, I had a ball with me 24/7 when I was a kid,” Cleary says. “I was constantly smashing stuff in the house from kicking a ball around. There’s photos of me when I’ve only just started walking and I’m kicking balls off tees and things. Kicking a footy – it sounds so simple but I just really love doing it. I just enjoy the feeling of kicking a footy. A lot of work has gone into it but it’s never been a chore to me.

“It’s fun for me to fiddle around with it and see what works and what doesn’t. It still takes me back to when I was younger and enjoying it down at the park.

“I always had a footy with me when I was growing up and it’s as much fun to me now as it ever was. I don’t want it to ever feel any different and I don’t think it will.”

He says: “It’s just that now I get to do it in a stadium with people watching and it can hopefully help my team. I can’t forget about that. I remind myself that I’ve dreamt of this stuff for as long as I can remember. I spent my whole childhood kicking a ball around on my own and now I get to do it on the best stage I can think of. I can’t ever forget that side to it all.”

Origin beginnings

I first interviewed Cleary before his Origin debut in 2018. He was 20 years old. Overawed and rather sheepish in the presence of Johns (and he hadn’t even see the Blues assistant kick a ball 40m through the door of a bus). The Cleary striding around at Panthers training and chatting amiably this week is a different bloke.

Assured. A leader. A premiership-winning halfback. A Clive Churchill Medal winner and a raging $3 favourite to be man of the match again on Sunday night. Thirteen Origins are under his belt. He’s just 24 years of age and a Kangaroos jersey is coming up at the World Cup.

“It’s funny you say that,” he says of his first Origin camp. “I don’t reflect too much on what’s happened previously but I definitely do feel more confident in my ability these days.

“Every experience makes you a better player and ever success shows that you’re doing the right things. Just being a part of this team gives me so much confidence, too. It’s just a great team to be part of. I’m very blessed to be surrounded by these players and these systems and these coaches at Penrith. I’ve come a fair way but I’ve still got a long way to go. It’s a journey I feel very fortunate and happy to be on.”

Enemy practice

It’s 10.42am on Monday. Parramatta is training. Thousands of fans are watching. All these squeals for the Eels.

Blake is practising his pick-up of grubbers. Forget the pick-up of grubbers. Can you take the torpedo bombs? Blake blows his nose. Forget the boogers.

Can you take the torpedo bombs? He cracks jokes with Reagan Campbell-Gillard. Forget the jokes with Campbell-Gillard. Can you take the torpedo bombs? Blake does catching and passing and hits tackle bags. Forget the catching, passing and tackle bags. Can you take the torpedo bombs? Because they’re coming. And they could decide the grand final. Cleary will kick ‘em high, kick ‘em low, attempt to kick ‘em to death once more.

“It took me a long time to get those high kicks right,” he says.

“I was doing them for a while at training before I started doing them in games. I just wanted to feel confident with them. Yeah, I’m feeling pretty confident with them now.”