Dolphins hooker Jeremy Marshall-King has revealed the extent of a gnarly leg gash that derailed his season for five weeks before he returned to help salvage a year being threatened by an escalating injury toll.
Lock Max Plath is set to miss the rest of the campaign with a suspected ruptured ACL, joining marquee props Daniel Saifiti and Thomas Flegler (shoulder), and skipper Tom Gilbert (pectoral).
The high casualty count made Marshall-King’s comeback for the side’s past two clashes all the more crucial.
Dolphin Jeremy Marshall-King has been in the wars since arriving in Redcliffe.Credit: Getty Images
“Everyone thought it was just a little scratch, but it was two cuts on my leg that were pretty deep,” the Kiwi hooker said.
“It got infected at one point and probably didn’t heal enough when I came back. I reopened it and had to go back in and get surgery.
“They had to clean it out because it got infected, and I had over 40 stitches in my quad – inside and outside. It wasn’t nice, but I had to get it done.”
Interim captain Felise Kaufusi will also miss the next two games after copping a grade-three dangerous contact charge for his hit on Cowboys halfback Tom Duffy, placing a huge onus on remaining props Francis Molo, Josh Kerr and Mark Nicholls.
Yet despite the overflowing casualty ward, the Dolphins have overcome four-straight defeats early in the season to win seven of their past 10 games and keep their hopes of a maiden finals berth alive.
The club’s surge included emphatic wins against North Queensland (58-4), the Dragons (56-6), Bulldogs (44-8), and Storm (42-22), lifting them to sixth and making them the most clinical attacking side in the competition.
At the heart of their turnaround has been the halves pairing of Isaiya Katoa and Kodi Nikorima, with the former leading the NRL for line engagements (161) and kick metres (6254), while sitting second for try assists (13), and linebreak involvements (13).
When asked if the Dolphins were a finals team with Katoa and Nikorima steering the ship, Marshall-King offered an emphatic response.
“Absolutely. Those two have been connecting well,” he said.
“[Katoa] is a young kid, really confident, and he leads the team around. He’s going to be a kid that is going to be really great, I am excited to see what is ahead of him, and hopefully the club can keep him for a long time.
“It comes back to our defence, that is something we take pride in. The last three weeks we have kept teams to [less than] 14, and not many teams do that.
“If we get that right, our attack will flow.”
The Dolphins’ current standing, however, strikes an eerie comparison to 2024.
Heading into round 16 in fourth, the Redcliffe-based club suffered a dramatic fall, winning just three more games to miss the finals amid a similar injury toll.
But Marshall-King was adamant that history would not repeat.
“The last two years, we had injuries and started to fall, and we had a lot of losses. This year, it is just something different,” Marshall-King said.
“Adversity has been part of this club since we started. We’ve had a lot of injuries and setbacks in our team, but the boys have stepped up.”
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