Mitch Barnett undergoes groin surgery as Newcastle Knights count cost of tough season

Barnett is recovering at home in Newcastle and about to begin rehabilitation in the next couple of weeks after undergoing a groin operation in Brisbane following the end of the club's premiership campaign.

On the same day as his surgery, teammate Jesse Sue also went under the knife to repair shoulder and knee damage.

Backrower Jack Johns, who is yet to be re-signed by the club, faces a five or six month stint on the sideline after undergoing a shoulder reconstruction.

Lachlan Fitzgibbon also had shoulder and knee operations while in Brisbane which sidelined him for the back-end of the season while interchange hooker Chris Randall missed the semifinal loss to Parramatta with a broken thumb that also required surgery.

"There's been a few of us having to go in to get stuff fixed up but that's not uncommon at this time of the year," Barnett said.

"I went into a private hospital in Brisbane to get both my groins done the same day as Jesse. We both had the same surgeon.

"I had my adductors released - they cut them off the bone to let them bleed out and reattached themselves."

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Barnett revealed he played with his groin problem for the bulk of the season, claiming the further it went, the worse the injury became.

"I was getting a lot of pain in the front of my pelvis region and public bone region," he said. "The surgery is supposed to have fixed it so I'll find out in a few weeks when I start rehab. I carried it all year but the longer it went on, the worse it became.

"You could feel it during games but it was afterwards when the pain was the most severe. I didn't sleep the night we played and I'd struggle to get around at all the next day. I was walking around like an old man.

"It would gradually improve as the week went on and I'd be good enough to play but then I'd be back to square one again. It was sort of a vicious cycle.

"I had scans done and it was decided that surgery was going to be the way to go but it was just a matter of getting through until the end of the season.

"The fact we were in camp up there on the Sunshine Coast helped a lot because we had physios there who were working around the clock, not just on me but on the other boys as well."