Halves Jack Wighton and George Williams were among a stack of players who would be rested against Cronulla, Ricky Stuart said before he quipped: "What are you like at tossing the coin?"

"I half laughed it off," Williams said.

"Half an hour later I was getting a coffee with Jarrod [Croker] and he was like, nah mate he's serious."

The most bizarre year of Williams' life has taken an unexpected but glorious turn. On Saturday he will captain the club he supported ever since lacing on his first pair of footy boots as a five-year-old in Cooma.

Williams' life has changed dramatically since he last played NRL football in June of 2019 against the Canterbury Bulldogs.

He married long-time partner Sarah Gilbert out at Sutton, and the pair snuck away for a honeymoon to Hawaii.

Blissfully unaware of the virus about to unleash hell around the world, Williams began preseason with the rest of his Raiders teammates and the quest for grand final redemption began.

Christmas was had with family out in Cooma, and New Year's was spent down the south coast as bushfires started to rage across the country.

On New Year's Day Williams woke up at Pambula Beach and took the chance to drive back home while Brown Mountain was open.

A fire which threatened to wipe out Bemboka had been diverted and a window of opportunity presented to escape the coast as fires closed in from every angle.

The sky was an apocalyptic orange. Ash sailed through the air, smoked invaded every crevice and airway, and visibility was barely 20m.

"By the time we got to Cooma, I just remember being in our family home in the middle of town and you couldn't put any of the fans on or anything like that because it would just swing the smoke around and make it even worse," Williams said.

"It was the middle of summer. The whole town was so dark in the middle of the day.

"There's not a lot you can do in the heat of the moment with the fires. I've got uncles, cousins and best mates who were in the fire brigade and who were out on the front line. It's a scary thought, the start of the year took its toll on a lot of people around town."

Cooma survived, but so many farms and properties in south-east NSW weren't so lucky.

When teammate Curtis Scott raised $25,000 at the start of the year to aid bushfire victims, Williams suggested he donate it to South Coast Rural Aid.

It's another example of Williams' unheralded leadership, and why Stuart had no qualms about letting Williams join the likes of himself, Mal Meninga and Laurie Daley as a Raiders captain.

As the fires settled down, everything began returning to normal. Williams played one game for Mounties in the NSW Cup in March but the virus arrived and shut everything down.

Since the NRL resumed, he's been waiting patiently in the wings for an opportunity, unable to play the sport that has sustained him for almost a quarter of a century.

For six months his days have consisted of fronting up to Raiders headquarters for training, then going home to Lawson to sit tight in an NRL enforced bubble.

That means no hugs from Mum or Dad, no visits from friends.

"I've seen a lot of Lawson over the last six months, we're allowed to walk around the block," Williams says.

But while the majority of his teammates have an outlet on the weekend, Williams can only watch on with itchy feet from the sideline, or from Stuart's coaching box where he was stationed in Sunday's win over the New Zealand Warriors.

Yes, he'd rather be playing. But as Williams quickly says, so much of life is about perspective.

"We use the word bubble, and it's a real bubble this year, but we get in this NRL bubble and sometimes you get very narrow minded and it takes something like the fires to put things in perspective," Williams said.

"It has been a difficult year for a lot of us but you compare it with what the farmers and people from the south coast and Monaro went through over the New Years, it just doesn't compare.

"That's really a life and death situation, we're just playing a game of football. Sometimes you need to step back and have a look at the big picture."

Ninety of Williams' 94 NRL appearances have been in the lime green. Three stints at the club have been punctuated by a season at St George Illawarra, and two moves overseas.

He helped steer Catalans Dragons to an unlikely English Super League semi-final in 2014, and then played a major role for Wakefield Trinity as they defied pundits' predictions to finish fifth in the same competition.

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It was during that season Englishman Ryan Sutton, who will run out alongside Williams on Saturday, first noticed the bright-eyed boy from Cooma.

"He's a real leader, you can tell he's got that quality about him, he can lead from the front foot," Sutton said.

"He's a real smart rugby league player, he knows a lot about rugby and he's just a great all round bloke. For him to get the chance to lead Canberra this weekend, there's no better way as a squad to go out and put in a good performance for him.

"Sam's family here, it's a real good thing for him. We're going to rally around Sam to hopefully get the win this weekend, he's pumped, he's really excited to get out there and lead this team around."