“I got the message yesterday to get ready for main skills so was pretty excited last night,” Cunnington told kangaroos.com.au just moments after completing the session.
“It felt unreal to be back amongst the boys and actually chasing the pill around instead of just running in a straight line.”
A conservative approach to rehabilitating a knee injury has kept the 19 year-old on the sidelines for an extended period of time but now, there’s no holding him back.
“We’ve taken a long-term view with Ben’s rehabilitation given his training age and the nature of the injury,” Director of Medical Services and Player Pathways Steve Saunders said.
Asked about his progress, Cunnington says he’s “On track…a little bit ahead.”
“Feeling unreal…everything’s going pretty sweet. My health, my knee’s fine and I’ve just got to get a bit of match fitness and hopefully (I’m) not too far away,” Cunnington added.
For North supporters, news of Cunnington’s return couldn’t have come at a better time after an unfortunate run of pre-season injuries of late.
And Cunnington also revealed there were a few other key inclusions in the drills.
“There was a little bit of a floating rumour yesterday that me, Narni (Nathan Grima), Scooter (Scott Thompson) and Rossy (Ben Ross) would be training but I didn’t get my hopes up too much because there was a couple of setbacks in the last couple of weeks.”
As it turns out, they weren’t rumours at all and all four players were allowed to kick, handball and run freely.
Cunnington admitting he was given an inch and took a mile.
“I didn’t know if I’d be tackling, but I snuck in for the first one… love the good old tackles."
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