Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nStorm CEO Justin Rodski provided a positive update on Katoa, but admitted the Dally M Second Rower of the Year has a long way to go. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been obviously a really challenging few weeks, both for him, the club, his family and he\u2019s in a stable condition,\u201d Rodski said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been improving, which is really pleasing, but he\u2019s still got a long way to go in terms of his short-term, medium-term recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next step for us is getting him back to Australia, so we\u2019re hopeful that over the weekend or early next week we can get him back to Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Rodski, Katoa will return to hospital in Melbourne and spend a \u201cperiod of time\u201d under the care of the club\u2019s doctor. <\/p>\n
Rodski also answered a question over Katoa\u2019s future in the game<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very early. We haven\u2019t even looked at that at this point,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just focused on his recovery, his health and his short-term (release from hospital).<\/p>\n
\u201cTo even speculate at this point in time, it\u2019s far too early.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NRL is currently investigating how Katoa was allowed to keep playing after receiving a brutal looking head knock in the warm ups which was missed by Tonga team doctors. <\/p>\n
\u201cClearly it\u2019s a really serious incident and something needs and requires an investigation,\u201d Rodski said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really comfortable with the process that the NRL has taken and once that\u2019s concluded we\u2019ll be able to understand the facts and we\u2019ll have all the information about how it happened and why it happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, clearly we were concerned. Clearly it was serious. But for now our focus has been about Eli and his recovery.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Originally published as \u2018It\u2019s far too early\u2019: Storm star\u2019s future under cloud after new update on serious brain injury<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Storm star Eli Katoa is set to be released from a New Zealand hospital in the coming days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,689,163695,163694,763,4536,647,4466,761,762,163696,158,677,163697,85,13321,163693,153296,660],"class_list":["post-286667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-brutal-looking-head","tag-dally-m-second-rower","tag-fox-league","tag-junior-paulo","tag-melbourne","tag-melbourne-storm","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-new-zealand-hospital","tag-nrl","tag-oceania","tag-positive-update","tag-sports","tag-storm-star","tag-team-doctors","tag-urgent-medical-attention","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286667","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=286667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}