Dragons coach Anthony Griffin has declared Jack Bird a certain starter for his side’s season opener as the Red V get ready to welcome back 12 of their stars for next week’s Charity Shield against South Sydney.
Bird went down with a knee injury earlier this month and underwent minor surgery to clean up his meniscus, but Griffin says the setback isn’t as bad as first feared with the utility unlikely to miss any NRL action after a wretched few years.
A first round bye means Bird has even longer to recover, with the Dragons not scheduled to play until the final game of the second week when they host the Titans.
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“He’ll be ready for our round 1,” Griffin said.
“He obviously won’t play next week against Souths, but it was a minor cleanup on his meniscus so he’ll be ready for the first NRL game.”
It’s a huge boost for a Dragons side that will welcome back a dozen players next week after they were no match for St Helens in their first pre-season challenge match on Saturday night.
The 30-18 loss flattered the hosts who were missing a stack of experience across the park, but they should have just about everyone back next week except for Bird and Jack de Belin, who is dealing with a calf complaint.
“He hasn’t got a tear,” Griffin revealed.
“It’s just a little bit weak on him at the moment so we’ll just treat it with a lot of caution. If we were in season and it was an important game then he’d play, but at this time of year we won’t risk him.”
In further good news, Jayden Sullivan is set to play next week after suffering a hamstring injury at training a few weeks ago, with the young playmaker to partner skipper Ben Hunt in the halves.
Their creativity and some extra space created by the returning forwards should provide more opportunities for strike centres Zac Lomax and Moses Suli who managed just four runs between them on Saturday night.
The pair only played the first half with Lomax starved of any ball, restricted to just one run which ended up being a try when he backed up a Ben Murdoch-Masila break.
The biggest surprise was seeing Lomax on the left and Suli on the right, and Griffin says that the experiment may continue into the season with the veteran coach keen to see them get early ball next week.
“Zac finished the year on the left last year, and they can both play either side so we wanted to have a look at that in the first half,” he said.
“We knew that they were only going to play half a game, and I thought they were both strong. We’ll see how it goes.
“I thought it was hard for both of them with our halves not having that extra bit of time.
“It was hard to execute when we needed to, and we probably just needed to give them some earlier ball, particularly on last play a few times. I thought they both did a really good job.”
