Nathan Cleary spent the days after Game 1 barely able to sit down or lie flat.
He spent the hours immediately after the 22-20 victory drinking beer with his dad and Penrith Panthers coach, Ivan Cleary, and said nothing.
The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that the New South Wales halfback will have a painkilling injection before tonight's match in Melbourne, this time for a hip pointer he's been carrying in secret.
The damage was done by his own side when Addin Fonua-Blake crashed into Cleary's left hip as the pair combined to tackle Harry Grant in the 15th minute of the game.
The first time the Blues' medical team learned anything happened at halftime, when he quietly asked to be needled and strapped into a protective pad before going back out.
"He suffered a direct blow to iliac crest on the pelvic bone, and the abdominal muscles attached to that; there was also a tear to his abdominal core, which the scans confirmed," Blues' doctor Nathan Gibbs told SMH.
Panthers chief physio Pete Green described the scale of the bruising as "the size of a soccer ball, and every colour under the sun."
Looking back on the original hit, Cleary admits he genuinely didn't know what or who had caused it in the moment.
"I thought it was given the way I felt afterwards," Cleary explained.
"I didn't even know it was Addin's head at the time [that caused the damage]. All I remember was it was pretty sore. I got to half-time, got it needled, and it was sweet.
"I wasn't coming off. It wasn't even on my mind. I just hoped, at half-time, the needle would work, and it did. You never want to give away any cues to the opposition. It was good we had the week off – that definitely helped. I'm just lucky to have the physios and medical staff we have at NSW and Penrith – they put so much work into me."
It isn't even the first hip pointer Cleary has nursed this year, revealing a knock to the right hip earlier this season that was sore at the time, but, by his own admission, nothing close to the pain that followed Origin night.
