It's one that's seen the likes of Glenn Stewart and Rhys Hanbury have one more for the road with their junior club in recent years.

Cleveland McGhie isn't at the same end of his career. He's still got plenty more to achieve and, in a season like no other before it, that's kinda' the point.

The 24-year-old will make a return appearance for the club he first played for as kid in Sunday's Presidents Cup clash with Dubbo CYMS at Parrish.

He's the first to tell you he's taken the long way back, not just this season, but in the several that preceded it when he first linked with the Raiders.

More than that, the path he's walked provides a pretty telling insight into life on the fringes of the NRL, something that's come into sharp focus since the Canterbury Cup was canned as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There's no manual on how to deal with such challenging times, but hindsight is starting to tell us the game should've done more to preserve opportunities for its second-tier players.

Who knows who may have slipped through the net, the next late bloomer, the next Damien Cook?

Talk of how much the game's highest earners might have to sacrifice dominated discussion when the pandemic first hit.

The whack players on the fringes juggling family, full or part-time work and all the rest just to keep the dream alive has been largely glossed over.

McGhie is a walking example on just about every level. He experienced first-hand the flaws the in the previous NYC set-up when he was with Canberra.

"I played at Wests all the way through, right up until I was 16 years old and then I had some offers from a couple of clubs to sign my first junior [rep] contract," he said.

"At the time I thought Canberra was the best option for me knowing they had a really good junior system. I played SG Ball down there and then went up to the 20s that second year.

"I played a couple of years there and signed an extension for that last season. In that preseason, I found it challenging away from footy.

"My work had just put me on fulltime and they wanted more from me. The Raiders extended me and wanted a commitment from me, my partner and I found out we were having our first child.

"Football as a junior definitely doesn't pay as it does as an NRL player so, with a whole heap of things going on, it was just best for my mental health to leave football."

For plenty of 20-year-old's, it's where the story ends - no harm no foul. Like a lot of others, McGhie went and played park footy with the Woden Valley Rams.

It was around the same time the Country Rugby League - pre-NSWRL merger - changed it's rep structure to an under 23s format.

The shift was aimed at keeping aspiring players in the game beyond the age of 20; McGhie ended up being one of them.

"After 20s my headspace wasn't the greatest," he recalls.

"I went back to local footy just for the fun of it and just to be around the boys when I wasn't feeling that great about footy.

"I played in the junior reps when they first started the under 23s, for Monaro, and ended up getting picked for Country.

"We played against Samoa and the Scottish national team, it was really good, and that's what probably sparked my interest in having a proper crack at it."

He was interested enough to travel to and from Canberra to play Ron Massey Cup for Cabramatta in the latter half of 2018.

From there he made the call to shift his young family to Newcastle to take up a contract with the Knights Canterbury Cup squad. There weren't many promises made on the financial front, it was little more than an opportunity.

"At the end of 2018 I got an opportunity to join Newcastle's Canterbury Cup squad so we took up that option," he said.

"The coaching staff were really good to me, I loved all of them, but at the end of the season they contacted said there probably wasn't an opportunity there.

"I had Frank Pritchard reach out to me at Cabramatta and say 'there's an opportunity here if you want it' and that they'd talk to the Bulldogs as well.

"Dave Hamilton, who first got me to the Raiders, was at Canterbury and gave me the opportunity to go and do a preseason.

"There was no contract or anything, just a preseason to try and earn a spot. It's probably the hardest I've worked in a preseason."

He earned his spot in the Dogs Canterbury Cup squad on match payments, and looked to be getting the ultimate payoff before COVID-19 slammed on the brakes.

"I earned a spot staying on with the squad but I wasn't contracted, it was a matter of paying me if I played game," he said.

"I just got told to keep coming to training and the opportunity would come. I didn't get a start round one, but they had a few injuries in that first game, guys looking at 6-8 weeks.

"I got the call on the Tuesday [before round two] saying I'd be playing that weekend. By the time Thursday came it was up in the air whether we'd play and then it all got cancelled.

"I was really grateful to be at a club giving me an opportunity and then it all came crumbling down with this virus. It's the way it is."

It's fair to say he's driven past a fair few 'Exits' on the rugby league highway but there's a silver lining in the chance to link back with the Devils.

It's something that runs both ways given the step-up the club is making to the Presidents Cup on the smell of an oily rag.

"When Cup got cancelled I didn't know what this year was going to hold," he said.

"I had an opportunity at Narellan and then that [Group Six] competition got postponed so I called [Wests coach] Pete McLeod and said 'mate I just want to play footy'.

"Pete actually came down to Canberra and caught up with me three years ago to talk about coming back, it just wasn't the right time for us. We're playing for nothing, it's love of the game and, for me, the love for the club.

"I've always had that desire to get back and play for my junior club and this year the opportunity was the right one to get back and the red and blue jersey."

Beyond that, who knows. Footy could look very different post-pandemic. He's just going to go "looking for a preseason somewhere."

"Hopefully at the end of this season there's an opportunity somewhere, there's still that desire to give it one last crack and put everything in," he said.

"At the end of it all, if nothing comes back, at least I can walk away and say I gave it everything I had."