Burgess in good company at the end of 'lonely' road back

The 29-year-old last featured in the NRL for the Rabbitohs in a semi-final victory over Manly in 2019, injury keeping him out of the subsequent preliminary final.

A degenerative hip injury kept his time at Wigan just eight games, with Burgess parting ways with the Super League giants in early 2021 to undergo hip surgery that may or may not have saved his career.

The Dragons took a punt on the latter, bringing Burgess to Wollongong on a modest two-year deal that barely compares to the massive dollars he once drew at the game's premier prop.

He was expected to spend up to a month in NSW Cup to test out his reconstructed hip, but a hamstring injury to Aaron Woods in round one has opened the door for Burgess' return to the top grade this week.

It's no small feat according to Griffin.

"It's a massive achievement for George, there were no guarantees he was going to get back to the NRL when he started training in August," Griffin said.

"It was a real unknown with his injury and the work he had to do. He's spent 18 months trying to get himself back to this level and all I can tell you is he hasn't left a stone unturned.

"There's a lot of lonely time training when you're in rehab. There's been a lot of pain management and an awful lot of hard work.

"That's what he was looking for. I asked him before he came back what he was looking forward to the most and he said he wanted to do a really long off-season because he hasn't been able to do one in five or six years.

"He's had to push himself and our medical staff have been fantastic navigating him to this point. I can't credit him enough for the way he's applied himself and got himself into this position."

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He won't be asking for any Herculean effort, but Griffin's confident Burgess is up to the rigours of NRL footy despite just one game in reserve grade.

"We always knew it was going to take some time but he's played two trials and a NSW Cup game now and his movements are good," Griffin said.

"If Aaron Woods hadn't got hurt he'd still be in NSW Cup but that's just the way it goes. He's good enough to play NRL now so he'll play tomorrow night.

"We're really happy for him and I know he's looking forward to it."

Burgess will be thrown in the deep end, with his return coming against the reigning premiers who set the opening round alight with a 28-6 demolition of Manly.

It came without injured star Nathan Cleary, with Griffin saying the Panthers "gave the whole competition a lesson" in their season-opener.

"On that performance they're a lot more advanced than any other team in the competition, particularly without having Nathan there," he said.

"They've bounced straight off what they were doing at the back end of last year. It was really high ball-in-play game as well so it was a really solid round-one effort. I thought it was the best [performance] of the weekend."

The Dragons are coming off a first-up win of their own having blown past the Warriors late to seal a 28-16 win last week, but Griffin knows a significant step up is required on Friday.

"For us it's about getting better than we were last week," he said.

"It's going to take a little bit of time when you've got five or six new faces in your team plus a few guys who are early in their careers but, at the end of the day, we didn't play as well as we should've for 80 minutes.

"You can put it down to combinations and things like that but I thought there were a couple of really bad lapses defensively. We were a bit untidy with the ball but, once we got our control back, it came together a bit.

"Our last 20 minutes was probably our best. We got lost a little but there in the middle of the second half but I was really happy with the way they finished it off."

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