ColdWetPanther
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Are we talking about the same Johns? Andrew ‘Joey’ Johns. Let’s look at Origin, where he is supposed to lap Cleary.Thing with Cleary is that I think playing in consistently good teams in a good system that he has at Penrith will play against in him the immortal ranks. It didn’t matter who Johns had around him or who he was coached by, he could still single handedly dominate in poor teams. Could Cleary do that? I don’t know, and tbh we probably won’t ever find out because while ever he’s in the Penrith system he’ll have a good structure around him. I’d love to see him go to a struggling team like the Tigers later in his career to try and turn the club around. If he can do that he’s definitely well and truely deserving of immortal discussion. At the moment I’d have him on par with a Cooper Cronk.
In the series when Joey was 26 (the same age as Cleary) he was on the bench behind Kimmorley. Before that he had been at hooker for two series, and at halfback for three. In the three series he was at halfback, NSW didn’t win the shield. One of those was against the 1995 QLDers (and while there have been many QLD teams given the moniker of worst ever, only one has had players that not even the coach recognised), while in 1998 we lost the series 2-1, losing the first game by one point after our kicker (you guessed it, one Andrew Johns) kicked 1 from 5. The actual experience (at least early in his career) don’t match the myth.
In terms of Joey being able to dominate teams single-handedly; did that really happen? 1991 he played an amazing game, but outside that Knights hardly dominated the period.