{"id":281553,"date":"2025-11-13T10:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T10:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/281553\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T10:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T10:33:10","slug":"hunt-weighing-up-surprise-career-call-nrl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/281553\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunt weighing up surprise career call – NRL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brisbane Broncos<\/a> star halfback Ben Hunt<\/a> has been widely expected to end his playing career at the end of 2026, but now, that is anything but a guarantee.<\/p>\n

Reynolds, along with veteran fellow Broncos’ halfback Adam Reynolds<\/a>, is off-contract at the end of 2026.<\/p>\n

Reynolds, who battled through injury at times during the year and suffered another one in the Grand Final, re-signed for 12 months at the back-end of 2025 to ensure his career would roll on for another 12 months, while Hunt had originally signed a two-year deal to the end of 2026 with the Broncos after being granted a release from the final portion of his contract at the St George Illawarra Dragons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the Broncos salary cap situation moving forward given big-money deals to Payne Haas<\/a>, Patrick Carrigan<\/a>, Reece Walsh<\/a> and others is questionable, Hunt is only on a rumoured $500,000 as it stands, and that could fall even further come 2027.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old will again likely play a mix of dummy half and halves throughout 2026, pending form or injuries to Reynolds and Ezra Mam<\/a>, with Reynolds then to be replaced by Jonah Pezet<\/a> in 2027 after he was signed from the Melbourne Storm<\/a> via the Parramatta Eels<\/a>, where he will play in the coming season.<\/p>\n

News Corp are reporting Hunt is weighing up his options but has not yet made a definitive call, although Michael Maguire<\/a> said he would be open to having Hunt remain a Bronco in 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot depends on \u2018Reyno’s’ path next year, but it’s quite handy having a player like \u2018Hunty’ around,\u201d Maguire told the publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we brought him back to the club was because of what he could offer our group with his experience, and he was so important for us at different stages of the season when we had injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cHunty has a real thirst for helping players around him and he has made for a really good environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked hard to get Benny back to the club. He saw it as a great opportunity for him to back come and achieve something special and now that he’s done that, there’s no reason he can’t keep going if the hunger is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunt has played 355 NRL<\/a> games, and, if he stays fit for another two seasons, could become the second member of the NRL’s 400-game club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brisbane Broncos star halfback Ben Hunt has been widely expected to end his playing career at the end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-281553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281553","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=281553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}