Dolphins star signing Herbie Farnworth will start pre-season training in early December despite missing England's ongoing Test series with injury.
The former Brisbane centre, who played in the 26-24 loss to Penrith in this year's grand final, suffered a quad injury before the decider and was also battling other niggles.
AAP has been told Farnworth spoke to England coach Shaun Wane about his injuries and was given the OK to miss the three-Test series against Tonga.
That injury cloud has provided a silver lining for the Dolphins, who were not expecting Farnworth to start training until early January after his England commitments.
"Herbie will start with other senior members of our NRL squad in early December," Dolphins CEO Terry Reader told AAP.
"He will definitely be right to start training with us when his annual leave period finishes, (which) is a benefit to us and him."
The Dolphins expect former Canterbury outside back Jake Averillo to start training early in November after his recovery from a posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injury in the Bulldogs' final-round game against Gold Coast.
"Jake has already moved to the Redcliffe area and he will start training with us in November," Reader said.
"His PCL was a six-week injury so he will be fit and ready to go.
"We have our players starting pre-season in three groups: our young guys and train-and-trial players start on November 6, the next group comes in a week later before out third group starts on December 11."
The Dolphins' NRL debut-season preparations were hampered by having a chunk of their squad unavailable to start training in early November.
"We won't have a situation like last year, where six or seven of our players didn't start with us until early January because of their World Cup commitments," Reader said.
"We have something like 13 players involved in the current Test matches but they already had four or five weeks off after our season finished in early September."
There will be a few players, including new prop signing Tom Flegler, who won't start training until early January because he is involved in the Pacific Cup Tests with Australia.
Flegler will need some recuperation time after featuring in the Broncos' run to the grand final.
Reader said the Dolphins still had two spots in their top 30 for the 2024 season and plenty of space left in their salary cap for the next three years.
