Season In Purgatory Provides Simpson Head-start On 2009
Newcastle Herald
Monday December 29, 2008
SEASONED second-rower Steve Simpson reckons there is an upside to too much injury downtime.
A mainstay of the Newcastle pack for the past 10 NRL seasons, the 29-year-old former NSW and Australian forward played just 12 matches for the Knights in 2008 due to a string of unrelated knee, ankle, hip and neck problems.Simpson lasted just four minutes of the first game of the season against Canberra at EnergyAustralia Stadium before breaking down with torn ligaments in his left knee, and his luck did not improve much for the rest of the year.But instead of spending the off-season in rehab, as he has done for the past two summers after clean-up surgery on his groin (2006) and knee (2007), Simpson has completed the first block of pre-season fitness and conditioning without missing a beat."It's been good for me because I haven't had a good pre-season for two or three years now, so it's the best I've felt for a long time and, personally, I'm really enjoying it," Simpson said."I've had knees and groins and a few different things and that's usually pulled me up from doing too much for the last two in a row and I haven't been able to run until after Christmas."That sort of limits your preparation so it's been good to get out there and be able to work on a few things I need to work on."I started off pretty badly in that first game with my knee, which was pretty disappointing."But in saying that, I suppose it's just part of the game and in hindsight it's probably freshened me up a little bit and I'm enjoying my training more now that I'm out there every day and seeing some benefits of that as well, so that's good for me."As a team I think we're going all right as well and doing some good things out on the field and getting some combinations down pat early on, so that should serve us well for next year."The departure of Danny Buderus and uncertainty surrounding the future of Adam MacDougall has left Simpson as the team's elder statesman, in NRL experience and almost in age, but he and 30-year-old prop Ben Cross hope 33-year-old MacDougall re-signs soon to take the heat off them."I was talking to Crossy the other day and he's our oldest bloke here now, so we're both praying that Doogy ends up signing again so we can go back down the list a little bit," Simpson said.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald