'Your body knows': Raiders star opens up on why this is his last NRL season

But it's taking him longer to recover from a season and he feels there's plenty of young guns coming through the Canberra Raiders' ranks.

It's why he plans to hang up the boots at the end of the 2024 NRL campaign, having already finished up his international career with England's series win over Tonga.

Whitehead is happy with his career; more than 350 first-grade games and 31 Tests for England and Great Britain.

There's just one thing missing - that elusive premiership to top it off.

The 34-year-old will sit down with Raiders coach Ricky Stuart during the season and nut out some form of off-field role with the club going forward.

He's settled in Canberra since he made the move Down Under ahead of the 2016 season, falling in love with the capital's laid-back community.

The Canberra captain has had an off-season clean-out of his elbow, but headed down to Kiama on Tuesday to be part of the club's pre-season camp and will begin training next week.

Whitehead headed home to England during his off-season before also having a holiday in Portugal.

Now he's focused on his final NRL campaign.

"That's the plan ... I'm pretty content it's going to be my last season," Whitehead said.

"I'm pretty happy with the career I've had. Obviously I want to win a premiership this year to top it off, that would be great.

"There's a lot of young boys coming through and it's probably the right time for me to hang them up.

"I don't know you ever do [know when's the right time]. I'd love to play til I'm 50-odd, but sometimes your body doesn't allow.

"After the last couple of seasons it took a while to recover and your body knows then.

"I've played a lot of games in my career and I've been injury-free, which has been helpful.

"Try not to think about it - it's another year away yet."

Whitehead is already hoping to not only remain involved in rugby league, but involved with the Green Machine as well.

What his exact role will be going forward is still up in the air but he's hoping to have something locked in by mid-season.

"That's the plan. I've got to have a conversation and sit down, probably in the middle of the season," Whitehead said.

"But that's what I'd like to do and I've had little conversations, but nothing definite yet."

While Whitehead's retiring at the end of next season and Corey Harawira-Naera's future's still up in the air, he still felt they had plenty of options for the second row.

NSW star Hudson Young, fellow Englishman Morgan Smithies, Simi Sasagi, Corey Horsburgh and Ata Mariota could all play on the edge.

The Raiders have been actively chasing a strike second-rower, having gone after Gold Coast's David Fifita and South Sydney's Keaon Koloamatangi.

They've also been linked to North Queensland youngster Kulikefu Finefeuiaki.

"I'm not sure what the craic is with Corey [Harawira-Naera] at the moment - he's still doing his tests," Whitehead said.

"Hopefully he can come through that and be back on field as soon as possible.

"There's Hudson, Morgan Smithies can probably play there, Ata had a few games there, 'Big Red' [Horsburgh] - I'm not sure he'll want to go to back row, I think he's pretty happy at lock - but he's an option, too.

"There's definitely options there. I know [Stuart's] brought Simi Sasagi, so there's another option."

Whitehead has come close to winning the NRL premiership a few times - making the 2019 grand final, while also making a couple of preliminary finals as well.

He will go into his final season with the Green Machine able to fly under the radar.

Whitehead said everyone had already written them off after losing star five-eighth Jack Wighton to South Sydney.

"I'm definitely confident. You go into every year confident," he said.

"I thought last year we were probably disappointing in some aspects, especially around defence, so it's something we're focusing on to fix up.

"Hopefully we can fix that up and get the attack right, and we'll definitely give it a shake up.

"A lot of people will write us off from the get go, which is probably a good thing.

"We've got no pressure on us we just need to go out there and perform, do what we usually do and turn up, and grind games out if we have to do that."