Wigan Warriors ace on return to a new 'normality'!

The 24-year-old was granted permission to return Down Under at the start of the pandemic to be with his family.

But now he’s back on the grass at Robin Park with the rest of his colleagues – and desperate to make up for lost time.

“It’s good to be back, good to be back in a routine, and we’re all raring to go,” he said. “I think while everyone trained really hard throughout the break, the routine side of things probably went off a bit.

“Now we’re back in that routine, back in and around the boys, it’s good to be back.”

However, even training back on the paddock is vastly different from before, with restrictions on contact for the time being only one of the changes.

“The thing to remember is it’s not just us that’s going through this, it’s everyone in the country and everyone in rugby league,” French acknowledged.

“We’ve all had changes to what we’re used to, and it’s not been that hard to be honest.

“We’ve got our heads round it pretty quick, and we’re still managing to get our work done as we would normally.

“Obviously we’ve had to cut back the contact side, and minimise that at the moment.

“But even without the pandemic going on, we might have been looking to make some changes in that area anyway.

"The way the new rules coming in have all looked to make the game a little bit quicker, there’s even more emphasis on conditioning which is what we’ve been focusing on.”

On the ‘six again’ rule coming in, he added: “I think it’ll be good for the fans, it’ll make the game even more exciting as a spectacle.

“Looking at the speed of the ruck, it’ll be even quicker, and I think that’ll bring about a bit more out of the footballers...there’ll be more emphasis on playing off the cuff.

“It’ll be more reaction footy, rather than setting up for plays.

“It’ll be great for the fans, and I think it’ll bring even more out of the flair players.”

While Super League as a competition returns this weekend, Wigan won’t be in action until Sunday week, when they face Wakefield.

“We start off at the top of the table, and we even have a week off to see how the other sides are managing to go,” the ex-Parramatta man added.

“We’ll obviously be taking notes from watching the games, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of things that we can be picking up and working on before we play.

“Not only on the field but also off it, and coping with the amount of games that we’re going to have to cram into a short amount of time.

“Even if it’s just one per cent...the one per cents were very important before, but they’ll probably be even more important now.”