{"id":140021,"date":"2025-09-13T11:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T11:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140021\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T11:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T11:18:10","slug":"catalans-coach-defends-the-retiring-luke-keary-after-playmaker-has-played-busted-all-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140021\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalans coach defends the retiring Luke Keary after playmaker has played ‘busted’ all season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catalans Dragons boss Joel Tomkins has leapt to the defence of Luke Keary, insisting the retiring half-back has shown remarkable commitment by playing through injury for almost the entire year.<\/p>\n

Keary, who will bring his career to a close at the end of the season, has endured a testing spell in Super League after arriving with high expectations.<\/p>\n

Yet Tomkins revealed that the 33-year-old has been \u201cpretty busted\u201d for most of 2025 \u2013 and believes he deserves far greater credit than he has received.<\/p>\n

\u2018He\u2019s been the glue for us\u2019<\/p>\n

Speaking after Catalans\u2019 shock win at Leeds on Thursday, Tomkins said: \u201cOne of his better games, for sure. He\u2019s played injured most of the season. He\u2019s pretty busted, and as I say, played injured all year, and that probably came into his decision to retire at the end of the season.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m really proud of him. I\u2019m proud of what he\u2019s done this year \u2013 he\u2019s been the glue a lot of the time for us. He doesn\u2019t get the recognition he deserves because we\u2019ve not played well as a team \u2013 but for me personally, he\u2019s been great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keary\u2019s leadership was vital in a patched-up Catalans side that had just 18 fit players heading into the Headingley clash. With Tariq Sims carrying a torn calf and Curtis Sironen forced off early, Tomkins said his senior playmakers had no choice but to step up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed Ben Garcia, Theo Fages and Keary to lead us and they did tonight,\u201d the coach added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Catalans Dragons boss Joel Tomkins has leapt to the defence of Luke Keary, insisting the retiring half-back has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-140021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}