As the NRL premiership race intensifies, rugby league veteran playmaker Daly Cherry-Evans has opened up about the unique growth opportunities that come with defeat at rugby league’s most intense representative level, offering a thoughtful perspective on young Queensland Maroons rookie Sam Walker’s first State of Origin experience.
Walker, 24, makes his return to Sydney Roosters duty this Friday, just one week after he and the Maroons suffered a heartbreaking decider loss in Brisbane that ended their 2024 State of Origin campaign. The young halfback’s first Origin series was a rollercoaster: he turned heads with standout performances in the opening two matches, only to walk away with the bitter taste of a series defeat after the final game. Now, he is set to rejoin his club full-time as the Roosters push toward a premiership title.
Cherry-Evans, who made his own Maroons debut back in 2013 at the exact same age of 24, says there is no question the Origin experience will change Walker for the better. The veteran Manly playmaker argues that defeat in a high-stakes representative series often teaches players far more than a victory ever could. “Origin’s a great development piece for any player that gets to play in that arena, and Sammy will be no different,” Cherry-Evans explained in comments to NewsWire. “He will have taken so many great lessons from it – the experience of playing in front of massive crowds, being in camp with the elite players of the game – there’s so much to take from that environment. There’s probably a fair argument to say you learn more out of a series loss than you do a win. He’ll come back no doubt extremely determined to finish this year successfully.”
One of the biggest takeaways for Walker, Cherry-Evans notes, came from six weeks of training and playing alongside Queensland legend Cameron Munster – a partnership that has already added new layers to the young playmaker’s game. While Cherry-Evans says he has already spotted subtle changes to Walker’s approach on and off the pitch, he is clear that the Roosters don’t need Walker to reinvent himself after his representative debut. The young halfback has long been celebrated for his natural, unstructured style of play, and Cherry-Evans emphasizes that this natural ability is what makes him so valuable to the club. “The best part about it is, of course he’s learnt things, of course he’s come back with a few good ideas or some improvements in his game, but he’s still Sam Walker,” he said. “And that’s the part that we need to always remember; Sam at his best is good enough. If he has improved, which I’m sure he has from Origin, well that’s even better for us as a club. As long as Sam’s not trying to be anything else but himself, I think that’s going to be great for us.”
Looking back on his own career, Cherry-Evans added that the lessons from his first Origin series took far longer to sink in than many might expect. Just a few months after his 2013 maiden Origin appearance, Cherry-Evans led Manly to an NRL grand final against the Roosters, but he says that early run of form wasn’t a direct result of the lessons he learned in representative camp. “I’ll be honest, my head was spinning for the first six years of my career,” he admitted. “Playing Origin early, playing for Australia early and having success at club land early were some of the most amazing memories I’ll never forget. But as for how did I evolve and change, I think there’s a really fair argument to say I didn’t really get it until probably six to eight years into my career. I had a lot of amazing players around me, but for whatever reason, all that advice and information just didn’t quite give me the full benefits until a bit later in my career. It’s not as if it wasn’t sinking in, it just took me a bit of time to figure it out.”
Now, as Walker prepares to face off against Munster this Friday in his first club game post-Origin, the rugby league world will be watching closely to see how the young playmaker translates the lessons of his first bitter Origin series defeat into club success for the Roosters.