"Crack on," Flegler said when asked about his mental approach to spending 677 days on the sidelines without going crazy.
A shoulder nerve injury kept the firebrand prop out of action from round five of 2024 through to the Dolphins pre-season trial against Gold Coast this year.
His return was true to form with Flegler barging over for a try and going red in the face with ferocity and passion.
Despite "treading water" for the best part of two years, the 26-year-old did not lean on sports psychologists or even mastercoach Wayne Bennett.
He looked within and found the desire and the drive to bash away each day.
It is no surprise the stoic banana farmer from Tully has this mentality in one respect. He runs and tackles hard as a prop and keeps it simple.
"No, I didn't see a psychologist or anything like that," Flegler said.
"It's just part of life. You've got some hurdles you've got to get over and some hurdles are bigger than others. Mine maybe was at some point in time, but you've just got to crack on with it.
"You've just got to get on with life. There's no point sitting there going on about it. That was my approach to the situation."
Despite all that, there were darker days than others ... as dark as they get at least for Flegler.
"The hardest thing was the uncertainty at the beginning. Obviously I had so much time off, we didn't really have a clear direction of where we were going," he said.
"I took six months off and we were just hoping that it would get better and then once we had the surgery, there's still another six to eight months to know if it's even worked.
"There's probably a year period there where you're kind of just treading water, you don't know if it's going to get better or when it's going to get better.
"We did everything right and the timelines worked out well ... and here we are now."
The last of Flegler's Origin matches was in 2023 when he starred in a 32-8 win. So did he think he'd be back?
"As athletes you've always got to have that bit of self-belief and a bit of confidence too, but to get back to this level probably not," he said.
"You dream of it and being a dream obviously the most realistic thing was just getting back and playing NRL. So we ticked that one off and now we're getting a bit better."
13°C