The retirement of Kieran Foran has left a void at the scrumbase,<\/a> one which has grown larger as Wallabies convert Carter Gordon makes his return to rugby union having been granted a release.<\/p>\nAJ Brimson was tried in the No.6 jumper at the start of the 2025 season with Foran sidelined through injury, but found a home at fullback following Keano Kini\u2019s neck concerns.<\/p>\n
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The former Queensland Maroon then made an impact at centre in the final game of the campaign \u2013 scoring twice against Wests Tigers.<\/p>\n
Preston admitted his remarkable rise as a premier halfback while playing for Cronulla came courtesy of his five-eighth, Adam Dykes, who he lauded as \u201cone of the best players in the competition\u201d.<\/p>\n
But while he was given the luxury of being able to \u201cplay the footy I knew how to play\u201d, rather than announce himself as the dominant game manager, he believed in time Campbell would blossom into that figure.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving somebody like that [Dykes] outside or inside you is really important, so I never really thought to be that person to take the game by the throat and manage it in a way a lot of the top halfbacks do,\u201d Preston said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJayden has that opportunity \u2026 but it does come down to patience. Jayden\u2019s one of those guys who doesn\u2019t have a lot of patience, he just likes the ball in his hands and like to run with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo know when to pass, to know when to hold onto it, to know when to kick it \u2013 it takes a lot of practice and a lot of education sitting down and doing your homework on the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s at that stage in his career now where he\u2019s ready to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe was chucked in a position he wasn\u2019t really familiar with this year that\u2019s a pretty specialised and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-203733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}