debilitating pain continued into the pre-season<\/a> and at one point he was restricted to walking laps of Shark Park while the team trained.\u00a0<\/p>\nAn injury-interrupted season followed in 2024 before Rudolf underwent a shoulder reconstruction late last year.<\/p>\n
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2025 Las Vegas Combine Mini Movie<\/p>\n
The operation forced him to miss the Sharks’ Las Vegas season opener and it took the prop some time to find his feet before he finished the year with a string of dominant performances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having enjoyed an off-season break, Rudolf and a number of Cronulla’s big names will return to training this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the side’s international stars will enjoy a few more weeks of rest, Nicho Hynes and Braydon Trindall headline the returning players.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rudolf is relishing the opportunity to enter a pre-season healthy as the Sharks look to lay the platform for a premiership charge in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“In 2024 I genuinely thought I’ll be the one player that doesn’t have a pre-season that just kills it,” Rudolf said. “Then lo and behold, that’s not the case. You actually do need it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not impossible, I had a good back end of the season but you just put yourself on the backburner and you’re playing catch up the whole time. When you go out there and can’t do what you know you’re capable of, that’s very frustrating as a professional athlete.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m excited for this pre-season because I’m actually an able body. It’s the pre-season that I’m most looking forward to in my whole career, knowing I can actually do it and get to know my teammates, the younger guys and get to know the older guys a bit better.”<\/p>\n
Next season is shaping as a pivotal one for Rudolf and the Sharks, with the club desperate to take the next step after back-to-back preliminary final exits.<\/p>\n
The forward is one of 17 players off-contract and 2026 could be the last chance for the current squad to taste premiership glory before a roster refresh.<\/p>\n
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Kennedy talks re-signing and 2026 goals<\/p>\n
While known publicly for his unique personality, his value on and off the field does not go unnoticed internally at the Sharks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cronulla captain Blayke Brailey is looking forward to watching Rudolf develop into a leader and said his voice will be crucial throughout the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He’s a massive part of this team and wears his heart on his sleeve,” Brailey said. “Our defining moment last year was the try-saver he did against the Dolphins, and then the match-winning try against the Roosters in the finals game at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You saw by the way everyone celebrates him and gets around him, he’s such an energy provider for us. Unfortunately with Ronnie [Mulitalo] going down he’ll have to take a bit more of the slack where Ronnie provides so much for us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I know Toby has a lot of energy and a lot of voice so we’re definitely going to lean on him a lot and hopefully like he says, we can love each other more.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sharks forward Toby Rudolf has a simple goal for the next few months. Get through the pre-season unscathed.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-323359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323359","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=323359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}