Standing in a back corner of the NSW sheds after Wednesday night’s hellish defeat, Nathan Cleary was a shell of a man.

He spent 20 minutes stewing on the game with his parents, Ivan and Rebecca, then agreed to take some questions from a huddle of reporters.

Inevitably, the Blues halfback was asked about that nagging narrative.

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“There’s this debate about whether you’ve owned the Origin arena,” one reporter said.

“Is it unfair?”

Cleary could have defended himself. Instead, he agreed with the critics.

“At the end of the day, I haven’t [owned the Origin area],” said Cleary, Penrith’s four-time premiership-winning halfback.

“I’m the harshest marker of myself anyway.

“I don’t really think what other people say is out of line because I probably think that of myself anyway.”

Cleary didn’t want to delve into what went wrong in Sydney — “I’m not 100 per cent sure [just yet]” — but he was certainly already racking his brain.

“I’ll definitely reflect, and it’s sort of already happening in my brain at the moment,” the 27-year-old said.

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“[I’m] just trying to work out what happened.”

A 20-year-old Cleary was the NSW halfback for all three games of the 2018 series, won by the Blues in the first two matches.

In 2021, the Blues again wrapped up the series in the first two matches, and Cleary was the halfback.

But consider this bleak statistic: the champion No.7 has played in three Origin deciders, and lost all three.

The jury is still out on whether Cleary, despite his series wins, has stamped his authority on the Origin stage, and his critics have never been louder than they are following the 24-12 defeat in Sydney.

On the same night Cleary failed to steer the Blues to victory at home, the 27-year-old’s opposite number, 24-year-old Tom Dearden, was awarded both man of the match and man of the series.

In doing so, the Cowboys gun may have won himself the No.7 jumper for the Ashes late in the year.

“At the end of the day, you just feel like you’ve let down the boys that you played with, and the state obviously. That’s what hurts the most,” Cleary said.

“And I let down myself, [and I have] high standards.”

Cleary is the Blues’ longest-serving current player, having effectively been an automatic selection when fit since the start of the 2018 series.

He admitted it pained him knowing the Blues would not get another shot at redemption for 12 months.

“I think it’s just about growing from it, not kicking stones but growing, and trying to find ways to get better,” he said.

“The frustrating thing about rugby league is you feel like you’ve learnt lessons before but then there’s always knew lessons to learn. No rugby league game is ever the same. It’s constantly evolving and you’ve got to evolve your game and that’s where I’m at.”