Luckless Englishman Ryan Sutton hopes an off-season trip to the Whitsundays will provide a change of fortunes in 2021 as he looks to play finals football in his third season at the club.
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Sutton was squeezed out of the Raiders' 17 in their run up to the 2019 grand final, while an untimely knee injury robbed him of post-season football last year.
Rather than wallow in self-pity at last year's horrible luck, Sutton balanced an exhaustive rehabilitation schedule with a period of introspection and concluded he needed a small break from rugby league.
"It made me realise over the offseason that I probably do a bit too much preparing for the year," Sutton said.
"This is the only year I've had where I switched off from rugby. Me and my girlfriend went away in Australia, we couldn't' go anywhere else so we went up to the Whitsundays and just switched off - it was good to just get away and shut off from everything.
"I've got to look after my body more, prepare as best I can and I've come back this year into the preseason probably in the best condition I've been in in a long time.
"Hopefully the back end of the year I can get rid of the nasty injuries, not drop in performance and keep going, hopefully get through to the finals."
Sutton came off the bench in Sunday's 30-12 win over the Wests Tigers, and enjoyed a 38-minute stint either side of half-time running for 129 metres.
He picked off exactly where he left last year when Sutton loomed as a key man for the club's finals charge, before succumbing to a medial ligament injury in the final round of the season.
Told he'd likely be out for at least six weeks, Sutton was ready to go in three and named on coach Ricky Stuart's extended bench for the preliminary final loss to Melbourne.
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"I said to myself, I'm not done yet," Sutton said.
"If we'd have got there [to the grand final] I could've been in, but the players that were playing in front of me were doing a good job as well.
"It's a credit to the physios and the staff that we've got here that they can put us into that position to be ready for a game as quick as they did."
Sutton unsurprisingly retained his spot for Sunday's round two clash against the Cronulla Sharks, but said competition for his jersey would be rife throughout the season.
"The good thing is we've got good versatility in our squad - the competition's strong and it's up to Rick what he wants week in week out," Sutton said.
"We've just got to make sure whoever is in there is up to the task."
James Buckley
James is a Queanbeyan boy enjoying his second stint at the Canberra Times, more than eight years on from his first. In between he's traveled the world, and spent time covering sport in Sydney.
James is a Queanbeyan boy enjoying his second stint at the Canberra Times, more than eight years on from his first. In between he's traveled the world, and spent time covering sport in Sydney.
