Rugby league: Anthony Mundine could end 17-year league retirement

Anthony Mundine was last seen in the ring in February. Photo / Getty

Anthony Mundine has made his most audacious claim yet, saying he could become the oldest rugby league player in premiership history.

The boxer and former St George Illawarra and NSW State of Origin, who turns 42 at the end of the month, reckons he can set the record for being league's most senior player, surpassing Billy "Bluey" Wilson, who retired in 1967 at the age of 40.

"I feel that good and that youthful," Mundine told AAP. "If I can get anywhere up to the speed of what I used to be as a youngster, that could definitely be an option.

"I want to do things that have never been done. I want to make it possible."

Mundine said despite being out of the game for 17 years - having left the Dragons and quit rugby in 2000 to pursue a boxing career - it is all about having "the speed, instinct and the football experience".

"I believe I am capable of it," he said. "Obviously I would like to go back to the Dragons but I don't know what their plans are. I will have to try and talk to them.

"But I am not really thinking of that right now. I just want to train my body and train my mind.

"I am doing the things I used to do, but I am just doing them better because I am wiser."

But the two-time boxing world champion says any attempt to return won't come before a third bout with long-time rival Danny Green.

"I haven't hung the gloves up totally yet," Mundine said.

Mundine went down to Green in a controversial points decision in Adelaide in February, Green squaring the ledger more than a decade after beating his fierce rival in Sydney in 2006.

Mundine's camp lodged an official appeal with the Australian National Boxing Federation in the hope of getting the result changed to 'no decision'.

But the former super-middleweight and middleweight world champion, who previously ruled out a third bout between the pair, says he is keen to settle the score once and for all.

"I am not sure what is happening with that (a rematch) but it could happen," Mundine said. "If it does, I might have one more to finish as a winner."

He said he was back training once a day, five days a week with the hope of returning to the ring with Green at the end of the year.

"I would like it to happen this year, at the end of the year personally, but it depends on his (Green's) camp and his team," he said. "I have shaken the cobwebs out, I feel good, I feel youthful and I feel I could do another five years if I really wanted to."

-AAP