Underground roadway excavation fundamentally alters the in-situ stress state of surrounding rock, often leading to stress redistribution, deformation, and plastic failure, which can compromise stability if not properly supported. This paper systematically examines the impact of short anchor cable preload and length on the stress distribution, the deformation behaviour, and the plastic zone development of numerical simulations in FLAC3D. A surrounding rock was modelled with an elastic-plastic Mohr-Coulomb constitutive model, and a single-variable parametric approach was used to isolate preload (150–350 kN) and cable length (2900–3700 mm) effects. Findings suggest that augmenting preload causes a significant decrease in maximum tensile stress, displacement and plastic zone depth, and an increase in compressive stress; but improvements plateau beyond 250 kN. Correspondingly, longer cable length results in better confinement of the rocks and decreased deformation, optimal results were achieved at 3300 mm, after which the benefits are marginal. In the study, a preload of 250 kN with a cable length of 3300 mm is found as the optimal configuration to stabilise the surrounding rock and ensure both economical and construction efficiency. These results offer quantitative data on the prestressed anchor mechanisms, which can be used to give real-life information on the design of underground support. In the future, field validation and variable geology conditions should be incorporated into the work as a means of further streamlining the support optimisation.