KNIGHTS halfback Jackson Hastings needed no reminding how much worse it could have been after twisting his ankle awkwardly in a tackle against the Warriors last weekend.
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Hastings immediately grabbed at his right ankle, which has been fractured and rebuilt twice in the past two seasons and is still held together by a metal plate and screws.
Adding to his stress levels, Hastings had been watching the Melbourne-Gold Coast clash 24 hours earlier when luckless Storm fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen limped off, having re-broken the ankle that he first fractured late last season.
"It scared me," Hastings said of last Sunday's incident. "It was a sharp pain. I watched Ryan Papenhuyzen last night and I felt bad for him and I instantly just thought of him. Touch wood he's OK, but mine wasn't anywhere near as bad."
Hastings proceeded to explain in graphic detail what caused the pain.
"Obviously with how big my plate is, every time it moves it makes you feel sick, really," he said. "It's just one of them that I've got to live with, until it's taken out.
"Obviously it was an accident, but it hurt."
Hastings hopes to eventually have the plate removed.
"Touch wood, if I get through this year, I'll have the option of taking it out," he said.
"Obviously when you've got a foreign object in your body it's not meant to be there and it causes pain.
"In the morning it's hard to get up and get around.
"If I have the option to take it out, I'll consult a few experts and see what'll be the best thing to do.
"There's a couple of NFL players that I follow who have had the same injury, and they've had their plates taken out to aid their range of movement and pain management.
"So I'll be guided by the physios and doctors, but yeah, I'd love to get it out if I could."
The 28-year-old and five-eighth Tyson Gamble have returned to the form they showed last year in successive wins against the Dolphins and Titans, after each had an early-season stint in NSW Cup. They will be chasing a hat-trick of wins against Wests Tigers in Tamworth on Saturday.
"We've spoken about it for the last couple of weeks, about how we want to get back to being that gritty defensive team we were last year," Hastings said.
"I think at the start of the year, we just wanted to blow teams off the park by scoring as many points as we could, but now we're just getting back to that Knights' DNA, defending our tryline and getting the crowd into the game. The pretty stuff will come later."
Hastings said it had been good to re-connect with Gamble in the halves.
"It's just kind of like for like," Hastings said.
"We're pretty similar people. We like the same stuff and we play footy similar. We both just compete hard and try and defend well.
"It's always enjoyable watching him carry on when he scores or makes a tackle. He always brightens up the day."
But with Jack Cogger waiting for another opportunity, neither Hastings nor Gamble can afford to set a foot wrong.
"I enjoyed playing with Coggs, too. I thought we play some good footy together, but now it's me and Tyson and I think we're going OK," Hastings said.
"Coggs is a premiership winner.
"He's the only one at this club who's won a comp.
"So I can't just think I've got a jersey sewn up. It was proven at the start of this year that no one has a position locked up.
"We're all competing and that's just going to help us grow and become better players.
"He's been training exceptionally, Coggs, and he's keeping us under the pump."
