KNIGHTS hooker Jayden Brailey believes his pre-Christmas trip to America to work with renowned rehab specialist Bill Knowles will be a career "turning point" after a series of long-term injuries in recent years.
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Brailey, who has had three of his four seasons since joining Newcastle from Cronulla cut short by injuries, travelled to Philadelphia with club physio Steve Lamond last month and spent five days working with Knowles.
The high-profile conditioning guru has become a go-to expert in recent years, assisting star NRL fullbacks Latrell Mitchell, Tom Trbojevic and Ryan Papenhuyzen.
"It was an unreal trip, I got so much out of it," Brailey said, speaking to the Newcastle Herald from Tamworth where the Knights are on a week-long training camp.
"It definitely caught me by surprise when they said they were going to send me over. You look at 'Turbo', Papenhuyzen and Latrell, they're pretty prolific outside backs.
"Bill is a genius. I took so much from a lot of his theories, and not just around the knee, but the whole body athletically. Obviously I've had a tough run.
"I got so much out of it and I'm so grateful the club invested in that trip for me."
In a rotten run of luck, Brailey tore an anterior cruciate ligament in round six last year.
The injury, which he also suffered in 2020, came after he missed two-thirds of the 2022 season due to a ruptured Achilles.
Over the past four years, he has played in 38 of Newcastle's 100 NRL games. But after his trip abroad, the 27-year-old is confident he can bounce back and have a strong campaign in 2024.
"I think it can be a good turning point in my career, and put me on the right track," he said.
Brailey, who has made 107 NRL appearances over the past seven seasons, debuting for the Sharks in 2017, said he would "definitely" be right to go for round one and hoped to feature in Newcastle's pre-season trials.
The Knights take on his former club on Saturday, February 17, in Gosford before facing the Storm a week later in Fiji.
They then host Canberra in their season-opener on Thursday, March 7.
"Pre-Christmas, it was a lot of running, but it's not really a whole lot of opposed [training]," he said.
"We started this week and I did a fair bit of it today.
"I'm pretty much 90, 95 per cent back into everything. Now it's just about getting the reps and drip feeding it back into me, because it's been a while.
"A good sign for me mentally is that I'm not looking to the sideline and asking the physio if I can do this. I've got belief and confidence that I can do this. I'm confident I can do whatever drill is thrown at me."
After spending much of last season on the sidelines, and missing the side's run to the finals, which included a 10-game winning streak, Brailey is the most motivated he has been in years.
"It was pretty inspiring what the boys did last year. It gave me a feeling in my stomach that I haven't had at this club before, just having that belief that we've got something special here," he said.
"Right now, it really excites me that we can do that again.
"We're capable of hitting those marks that we did last year. That's a big part of our conversations at the moment; how can we go further and build off that 10-game streak that we had.
"Obviously not being on the field was pretty bloody hard ... but going back to those feelings and what I went through at the time, that's what really sparks that fire in the stomach.
"It's the strongest it's been for a pretty long time, to be honest."
