Austin last played in the Raiders' 36-6 loss to Parramatta in round six and there was speculation he could return to face the Panthers this weekend, but coach Ricky Stuart didn't name him on Tuesday.

Instead, Stuart opted to stick with Aidan Sezer and Sam Williams as his halves pairing after they combined well in the Raiders' 60-6 thumping of Wests Tigers on the weekend.

With the Raiders looking for consistency following that win, Hodgson felt it would be tough to drop anybody this week.

"As much as Austo's a fantastic player, the consistency of Sammy in there this week after a good win last week is probably a blessing in disguise for us," Hodgson said.

"We had a good squad last week that had a good performance. It's tough to drop anybody when you've had a big scoreline like that."

Hodgson picked up another three votes in the Dally M Medal count against the Tigers in a dominant display at hooker.

The 26-year-old Englishman has been brilliant so far this season, which is reflected in polling 13 votes so far to lead Cronulla prop Andrew Fifita by three.

Raiders lock Shaun Fensom said it was awesome playing alongside the "tough little Pom", who he didn't think would be paying much attention to how he was going in the award.

"He's a massively key player for us, even off the field he's helping a lot of players out and on the field you can see he's going from strength to strength," he said.

"He puts a lot of time out here on the training paddock and he deserves every credit he gets. It's awesome playing beside him, he's a tough little Pom too you know.

"He gets knocked around a little bit, even against Parramatta he hurt his knee and his thumb and he still came back out and played the rest of the game. He's rated very highly in my books.

"He's a very humble man and he doesn't look at that sort of stuff. He's just concentrating on doing the best performances he can here for Canberra and that's just the kind of bloke he is."

Justifying the humble tag, Hodgson put his form down to his front row.

He said it was easier to "jump out" of dummy half when his props were "punching holes either side of you".

Hodgson was looking forward to testing himself against Panthers hooker James Segeyaro, who returns after a lengthy spell on the sidelines through an arm injury.

"I think [my confidence] just feeds off the boys. When you've got big front rowers that are flat and carrying it hard, and whenever I get a chance to jump out of there when you've got people punching holes either side of you that makes my job so much easier," Hodgson said.

"As you saw in the past couple of games before this week we had the Sharks and Parramatta and we kind of got frustrated as a team because things weren't going right and the opportunities were very little.

"I thought on the weekend we just put into practice the things that we've been doing in training and things flow off the back of that, as you saw on the weekend."

NRL ROUND 9

Saturday: Penrith Panthers v Canberra Raiders at Bathurst, 3pm. TV: Live on Fox Sports 1.