KEY POINTS:
When Jerome Ropati steps out on to CUA Stadium to take on the Panthers this afternoon, there will be more than a few nerves rattling around.
They're not game-day nerves. This year is his sixth with the Warriors, which makes him an experienced campaigner at the ripe old age of 23. For Ropati, though, there are doubts about his hamstrings and whether they will last 80 minutes of football today.
They didn't last time, when he pulled an already injury-prone hamstring in the 79th minute of a game against Newcastle six weeks ago. It was his fifth hamstring strain in less than two years (four on the right leg and one on the left) and, when added to his fractured scapula and two ankle injuries, has meant frustration for the talented centre. Fifteen games out of a possible 34 is not what he had in mind.
"I went into that Newcastle game really confident because I believed I had done everything I could to fix it," Ropati says. "Now confidence is down because I don't know whether I'm going to do it again. I don't want to sit out chunks of season.
"When you do strain your hamstring you're likely to do it again because scar tissue builds up and it shortens the hammies. You're susceptible to doing it again." Ropati likened his injury to one rugby convert Timana Tahu is trying to overcome. Tahu admitted recently he had held back from running at 100 per cent for years because of a fear of doing further damage to his hamstrings.
From 2003, he was blighted by recurring injuries that restricted his NRL career to only 139 games in nine years at an average of 15 a season. Tahu has also undergone major assessment of his running technique to try to iron out the problems by using his gluteal muscles more.
"It's about biomechanics and how your body runs," Ropati says. "I have seen a few experts and we've tried to work out how to restructure my body and find out what's irritating the hamstring. I think we have figured it out. It has a bit to do with how I run but I have been running like that for 20 years so it's hard to change. I feel fit but it's something I have to deal with. I think most of it is mental."
Warriors doctor John Mayhew says Ropati is an injury-prone player who takes longer to bounce back. "We can't find a cause for it," he says. "That's the way he is."
