Mitch Barnett has been bouncing off the walls.
I think he has got a little chip on his shoulder.
He thinks he has let everyone down, so he is going to try and repay us this week.
His high shot on Chris Smith back in round three against the Panthers certainly cost him, but he came out and said it was a brain snap.
No one is perfect.
He owned up to it and knew he stuffed up.
None of us boys were off him or anything like that.
We stuck by him and the club did as well.
We're right behind him.
It was probably eating him up while he was getting flogged the last six weeks.
It would have been playing on his mind, even more so given how we've been going.
I copped a four-game suspension once for going off at a ref and it does get lonely, mainly because you're not injured and you can't do anything to help the side.
The training staff get stuck into you and you've got to keep match-fit as well.
Mitch has put the work in. He would do a session with us, and then another hour or 40 minutes extra of just getting flogged.
There was not one time he whinged. He turned up to every session and there were no complaints.
So he did well.
He has served his time and he has trained bloody hard until now. We're excited to have him back.
As for our game against the Cowboys, it was much of the same - lots of leg-up penalties, they scored tries on last plays and our starts were poor. Again, in the first 10 minutes, we were defending. We gave them a leg up straight away in the first set. They kicked downfield and we were under the pump.
We can't be starting like that and then trying to crawl back into it. We suck a lot of juice out in the first 10 minutes and then we've got to try to match it with them when they haven't spent any.
But we kept fighting back and we got up in the first half.
Just imagine if we start really well and don't have to work double-time.
We did really well to hang in there and our young halves, Tex and Phoenix, really helped get us back into the game. They were good. Young blokes who got a chance. Phoenix is a great talker, he is really confident in the way he plays and I thought he did really well.
Guys like Leo Thompson and Mat Croker are also doing their best. Under the circumstances, they've got to step up a little more but they're doing their jobs and we can't ask any more from them. Every game they just get more experience and get to see what NRL footy week-to-week is really like.
We face my old club the Bulldogs this week. There's only a couple of blokes left there from when I played with them and they're a very different side, but they've got some good players.
If we fix our starts, we will be a real chance.
