{"id":317210,"date":"2025-11-29T21:01:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T21:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317210\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T21:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T21:01:20","slug":"nrl-news-2025-eli-katoa-instagram-post-concussion-brain-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317210\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2025 | Eli Katoa Instagram post, concussion, brain surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eli Katoa<\/a> has declared his desire to return to the NRL despite being ruled out for the 2026 season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The forward won’t play for Melbourne next year following Tonga’s Pacific Championships clash with New Zealand, after which he underwent emergency surgery for a brain bleed.<\/p>\n

Katoa was knocked out in the warm-up and sustained two more concussions during the game. <\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Hoodwinked’ NRL stars can return says V’landys<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Embarrassing’ WBBL farce slammed as game bizarrely called off<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Special’ Matildas strike punctuates Kiwi thrashing<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Eli<\/p>\n

Eli Katoa is seen speaking with a Tonga trainer.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

The Melbourne Storm back-rower took to Instagram to express gratitude for the well-wishes and medical staff.<\/p>\n

“First of all, I would like to say how grateful I am to get to where I am today,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

“I wanna say a huge thank you to everyone who prayed, visited, sent me a message and checked in on me. I really appreciate it. I’m sorry if I haven’t got back to you, I will get back to you guys soon. To all of my family, thank you for the love and support.”<\/p>\n

Katoa also thanked Tonga Rugby League, praising the “quality time” spent in camp.<\/p>\n

“I love playing for our little kingdom,” he said.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old thanked his partner and the Storm before expressing his desire to return in the future.<\/p>\n

“I’m back at home at the moment and I’m in a good place now. My recovery is going well and hopefully I can keep ticking all of the boxes that I need,” he said.<\/p>\n

“And to the Storm fans, in God’s timing ‘I’ll be back soon’.”<\/p>\n

The NRL is yet to reveal its findings into the process where Katoa was allowed back on the field.<\/p>\n

Melbourne has reportedly locked in Jack Hetherington as a replacement to Katoa for next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Katoa has declared his desire to return to the NRL despite being ruled out for the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-317210","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\/317210","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=317210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}