FORMER Knights playmaker Jarrod Mullen has suffered a cruel setback in his return to professional rugby league, dislocating a shoulder playing his first Queensland Cup game for Sunshine Coast Falcons.
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Mullen, who turns 34 next month, signed with the Falcon in January after completing a four-year ban for testing positive to a banned steroid late in 2016, as he was preparing for his 13th top-grade season with Newcastle.
On Saturday, four years, six months and 17 days after his last appearance in the NRL, Mullen returned to competitive action when the Falcons - Melbourne Storm's feeder team - hosted Northern Pride at Sunshine Coast Stadium.
Playing off the bench behind starting halves Cooper Johns and Todd Murphy, Mullen entered the fray in the second half and came close to marking his return with a try.
But then disaster struck when he was injured in a tackle and taken to hospital by ambulance.
Mullen told the Newcastle Herald he was "shattered" and would have scans on Monday to determine the severity of the injury.
He revealed it took close to two-and-a-half hours before medicos were able to "pop" his shoulder back into the joint.
The former NSW Origin half, who played 211 NRL games for Newcastle and captained the team to two wins during the 2013 play-off series, is no stranger to shoulder injuries.
In 2007, the year he played his lone Origin game as a 20-year-old, he needed a full reconstruction of his left shoulder, which ended his season after 12 games.
In 2009, he partially dislocated his right shoulder and needed post-season arthroscopic surgery to clean up the damage.
He braved the pain barrier that season to play in 23 games and help Newcastle reach the finals.
"I just had to grit the teeth ... and just go out there and play," Mullen said at the time.
"There's a lot of guys out there injured and I'm not going to sit on the sidelines and sook about it."
Mullen's new coach, Sam Mawhinney, told the Sunshine Coast Daily his veteran recruit had been "pretty flat" as the full impact of his injury sunk in.
"It [his shoulder] has been out for one to two hours, so that's not a good sign," he said.
"We're not too sure of the extent of the damage but we'll come up with a management plan."
Mullen will be desperately hoping that the injury can be treated with physiotherapy, potentially allowing him to return to the field by mid-season.
If he needs another reconstruction, the recovery period could be six months, or longer.
The untimely body blow increases the odds stacked against Mullen in his brave quest to return to the NRL.
Many will doubt that he can make it back to the top level after his doping ban and a much-publicised battle with social drugs, culminating in him pleading guilty to supplying cocaine and serving 300 hours community service.
But he insists he has been clean and sober for more than two years and is determined to end his playing days on a positive note.
As he told the Newcastle Herald recently: "I'd be lying if I said my goal wasn't to get back there [to the NRL].
"If I'm playing good enough football up here in the Q-Cup, maybe some NRL teams will have a look at me.
"I'm under no illusions. Four years out of the game is a long time and it's going to be hard.
"But I've trained really hard to condition myself and I'm confident with how the body has been holding up. I'm going to leave nothing in the tank, put it that away."
