Eli Katoa remains hopeful of a return to the NRL, saying his recovery from brain surgery is \u201cgoing well\u201d as he paid tribute to his partner and fans for supporting him.<\/p>\n
Katoa was ruled out of the 2026 NRL season<\/a> after undergoing emergency surgery in New Zealand to treat a brain bleed that he suffered while playing for Tonga in the Pacific Championships in early November.<\/p>\n The Melbourne Storm second-rower\u2019s career was thrown into doubt after he suffered three head knocks in 90 minutes<\/a> and required oxygen on the sidelines.<\/p>\n Katoa spent more than two weeks in hospital before consulting with specialists in Melbourne, who advised that he not play next season.<\/p>\n The 25-year-old is continuing his rehabilitation and recovery under the watch of the Storm medical staff, and said he hoped to play again.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m back at home at the moment and I\u2019m in a good place now,\u201d Katoa posted on Instagram.<\/p>\n \u201cMy recovery is going well and hopefully I can keep ticking all of the boxes that I need!\u201d<\/p>\n Katoa thanked people for their messages and the Storm club for its support, and included a tribute to his partner Tuitofa Aloua.<\/p>\n \u201cThis woman has been amazing, strong and sticking by my side through it all,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cA special thank you to the Storm for all of the help and support that you guys are continuing to provide, I appreciate it.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd to the Storm fans, in God\u2019s timing \u2018I\u2019ll be back soon\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Allow Instagram content?<\/p>\n This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.<\/p>\n Ryan Papenhuyzen, who also won\u2019t play with Melbourne next season after walking away from his contract, was one of Katoa\u2019s teammates to respond.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Australia Sport<\/p>\n Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cHealth is wealth king, look after yourself my bro,\u201d wrote the star full-back, who has also endured career-threatening injuries.<\/p>\n Katoa\u2019s post included some confronting images of him in hospital, showing where his head had been shaved for the surgery.<\/p>\n The loss of Katoa and Papenhuyzen, representative prop Nelson Asofa-Solomona and promising half Jonah Pezet puts a dent in Melbourne\u2019s aspirations of winning a title after two successive grand-final losses.<\/p>\n The Storm will receive salary cap relief for Katoa, but the Dally M second-rower of the year is almost impossible to replace.<\/p>\n The NRL has completed an investigation into Tonga\u2019s handling of his injuries, but is yet to release its findings.<\/p>\n With Australian Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Katoa remains hopeful of a return to the NRL, saying his recovery from brain surgery is \u201cgoing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-317831","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\/317831","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=317831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}