Parramatta star Dylan Brown has said that there are no hard feelings with Nathan Cleary after the spear tackle that saw the Panthers star sent off in Friday night’s game at CommBank Stadium.
Speaking directly after the game in the sheds, Brown said that Cleary had not yet reached out to him, but that he was uninjured and held no grudges against his opponent.
“It was fine,” said Brown. “Obviously it was a shit tackle but I got up feeling sweet.”
Cleary is facing five weeks on the sidelines and said he was “filthy” with himself.
“It hurt a little bit, but once I got up, it was fine. Hopefully Nath knows I’m sweet. He doesn’t need to worry about anything. I haven’t seen him after the game. I know if I was to do a tackle like that, you’re worried about the player.”
“It was just the shock,” he said of the impact. “I got up and I was fine. You sit there and think ‘what happened’ but then you get up and realise you’re fine. I came out of it pretty lucky.
“When I got up, I didn’t know how bad it was because you don’t really know when you get tipped upside down. But when I looked up I thought that was a couple of weeks. Who knows? Hopefully he doesn’t get charged too badly because Penrith need big Nath there.
“We don’t play the game to hurt each other in that way. Obviously you play the game to hurt each other legally, but I’m sure he had no intention to do that. I’ve got no hard feelings against him.
“If anything, I hope he’s back next week because it was unintentional. But rules are rules. I’m hoping for the best for him.”
Brown admitted that it would be a hammer blow for the Panthers to miss Cleary and his halves partner, the injured Jarome Luai, on the run-in to the finals.
“It sucks heading into the finals because you want to have your spine there,” he said. But Penrith are a good team and they showed in the second half that they didn’t really need them (the halves) at times.”
The Eels five eighth said that his team, who lead 30-4 at the break, should have kicked on to put a cricket score on Penrith, but were thwarted by a spirited Panthers resistance.
“They took it up another gear in the second half,” said Brown. “They came out buzzing in the second half. I don’t know what Ivan said, but it worked.
“We were disappointing. We were chasing points when we didn’t need to. The points were just going to come off the same game plan, but we changed it when the game plan didn’t need to change.”
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