Rugby league star Eliesa Katoa’s career remains in jeopardy as he is set to be transferred to a second hospital to recover from brain surgery.<\/p>\n
The Melbourne Storm and Tonga second-rower suffered seizure activity during his nation’s Pacific Championships clash against New Zealand at Eden Park, Auckland, one fortnight ago.<\/p>\n
Katoa suffered a knock to the head from his teammate Lehi Hopoate’s shoulder in a pre-game warm-up.<\/p>\n
He was cleared to take to the field again, only to suffer two further head knocks during the game.<\/p>\n
Katoa looked distressed sitting on the bench after the final knock midway through the second half, with a bloodshot eye, a cut on his cheek, and blood streaming down his face.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was then given an oxygen mask.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old was later revealed to have suffered brain bleeding as a result of the incident, and had to undergo brain surgery at a hospital in Auckland.<\/p>\n
He has been recovering with the support of his partner and mother, but he is now set to return to Melbourne where he will continue recovery in another hospital.<\/p>\n
Melbourne Storm CEO Justin Rodski admitted it had been tough going for Katoa but said the player’s health and wellbeing was the priority.<\/p>\n
“It’s been obviously a really challenging few weeks, both for him, the club, his family and he’s in a stable condition,” he said on Friday.<\/p>\n
But he also acknowledged there was uncertainty on when or if Katoa would return to the field.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know, it’s very early and we haven’t really looked into that,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We are focused on his recovery and his health in the short-term at the moment… so to even speculate or consider his future at this point, it’s just far too early.<\/p>\n
“We’d love to see him in 2026, clearly, as he’s probably been one of our best two or three players in the last two years… but at this point it’s really not even something that’s on our radar.”<\/p>\n
Katoa had become one of the most consistent performers in the NRL since joining the Storm from the Warriors in 2023.<\/p>\n
Since joining Craig Bellamy’s side he has scored 32 tries in 72 games and featured in two back-to-back grand final defeats while also picking up the Dally M second rower of the year in both 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n
Many argued that he was next best on ground in the 2025 decider, behind Brisbane’s Reece Walsh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rugby league star Eliesa Katoa’s career remains in jeopardy as he is set to be transferred to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,40101,152341,55228,4466,761,762,158,159,85],"class_list":["post-285540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-concussion","tag-eliesa-katoa","tag-head-knocks","tag-melbourne-storm","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-rugby-league","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285540","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=285540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}