'Removed dead bone': Souths star Campbell Graham ready to play after troubling sternum injury

It's been over 500 days but South Sydney star Campbell Graham is ready to return to the NRL.

Rabbitohs fans missed Graham in 2024 with the former Kangaroos centre forced to stop playing due to surgery and recovery from a sternum injury he picked up the year before.

Campbell needed 29 pain-killing injections to get on the field in 2023, winning his club's player of the year award despite playing through pain, and was initially expected to be fit for the 2024 season but was forced to sit after complications arose.

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It's understood part of Graham's sternum had actually 'died', with doctors telling the Souths star the amount of painkilling injections he had taken may have caused an infection.

"They removed the dead bone from my sternum, took a bone graft from my left hip, then put the fresh bone into the sternum, and covered it with a couple of plates," Graham told The Sydney Morning Herald.

"There was no blueprint in terms of when I could return. I was hoping I could be back around round 16 (2024), but it was up to the surgeon, and he told me when I could run and when I could do weights."

Such was the club's concern, it decided to keep Graham off the field for the entire season and focus on a 2025 return.

Graham says the decision has proved to be the right call.

"I've been doing full contact since November, and I feel like a footy player again," Graham said.

"I pulled up sore, and in a funny way I never realised I would miss that. Just having that contact, you don't realise how good it is to have the collision."

Graham said coach Wayne Bennett had urged him not to "rush" back but he felt the time was right.

"He told me to not rush things and think I should be playing fit for day one of pre-season. He gets you into that head space where you need to understand you won't be at your best your first game back, that you need to accept that, and how you can only be the best you can be and build on that.

"Wayne simplifies everything, that's the way he coaches. It's not rocket science, and he instils belief and simplicity."