Battling with a dodgy left knee, Dragons back-rower Young has received the news that nobody wants to hear, and that is, that he will miss out on the start of the season due to the injury.

After suffering deep bruising inside his knee, the injury forced Young to miss all three trial games for the Dragons, the WCC, and trials against the Bulldogs and Souths.

Young is set to resume training today, but he is not willing to take any risks, given that he has been sidelined for 4 weeks.

“I’ve come this far and sacrificed the World Club Challenge, so I’m not pushing it,” Young said.

“In the past when I’ve pushed my knee, I’m on the sideline for a month, so that’s not ideal.

“I don’t want to play one game and then miss the next four.”

For Young, with his knee injury, the short turnarounds that he is faced with are a pain in the backside for him, as he has to be careful as to how he goes about himself.

“After I played the City-Country game on the Friday [last year], I backed up and played against Manly and six days later we played Parramatta on a Friday night and I missed a month after that,” Young said.

“Luckily I was only out for two games because we had a bye in the middle.”

Despite the injury however, Young, who is contracted to the Dragons until the end of 2012, says that the injury will not shorten his NRL career.

“I don’t know if I can play beyond 30, you just have to take it a year at a time,” he said.

“But the beauty of this is we’ve dealt with it before.

“I’ve come back from this in 07. That’s when I rushed back and I spent virtually the whole year [struggling] because I had real bad bone ridge and stress fractures. I don’t think it’s a major deal, just something we have to manage.”

Young is also optimistic about the boom young players that the Dragons have coming through, saying that Jack Bosden and Jake Marketo are ready to shine.

By ricky

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