While most NRL footballers head to the beaches of Bali or Fiji to recharge the batteries over the off-season, Gallen made the trip to the cold of northern England where he finally experienced something he hadn't done much of over the first nine months of 2009.

"Last year at Cronulla I won two games all year - that was it," Gallen said.

"They only won five, but they won some when I was out. "We weren't winning, I wasn't happy at all.

"The tour at the end of the year, that really helped me. That brought back a lot of the love of it and that winning feeling again." While that winning feeling hasn't quite made its way back to the Sutherland Shire - save for a promising past month - the trip helped Gallen put things in perspective.

It's why he was able to look objectively at why he missed selection in game one of the State of Origin series, despite the snub coming just weeks after he wore the green and gold for Australia in the mid-year Test and during a run of form as good as anything he has ever produced.

"The blokes that were picked in front of me (for game one), all the backrowers were in top four teams - that's not whingeing or carrying on about it that's just the way it was," Gallen said.

"I went back to Cronulla and continued to play footy and probably the little bit of the turnaround there probably helped me through and the last four games have been pretty good.

"Team success breeds individual success, that's just what happens. Those backrowers, they were all winning and we weren't - what can you do." But Gallen is back for game two, with the Blues staring down the barrel of a fifth straight series loss.

While it is assumed he has been recalled to add some starch to the NSW pack, Gallen denied he would go out there to be a hitman, something he may have been guilty of in the past.

"I don't worry about it too much," Gallen says of his reputation for bringing the mongrel.

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