{"id":317906,"date":"2025-11-30T04:59:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T04:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317906\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T04:59:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T04:59:12","slug":"be-back-soon-katoa-hopeful-of-nrl-return-nrl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317906\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Be back soon&#8221;: Katoa hopeful of NRL return &#8211; NRL News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>One month after suffering a career-threatening brain injury, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/nrl\/teams\/melbourne-storm\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Melbourne Storm<\/a> back-rower <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/players\/eliesa-katoa\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Eliesa Katoa<\/a> admits that he is hopeful of a return to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NRL<\/a> in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Ruled out of the 2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NRL<\/a> season after undergoing emergency surgery to treat a brain bleed, Katoa&#8217;s future was thrown into immediate doubt, with many believing that he may have played his final match in the 13-man code.<\/p>\n<p>Having spent two weeks in the hospital as he tried to recover from three concussions sustained in an 80-minute period, the back-rower has spoken for the first time, thanking family, fans and friends as well as stating that he&#8217;ll &#8220;be back soon&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/gallen-calls-for-life-bans-after-katoa-concussion-incident-229197\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Gallen calls for life bans after Katoa concussion incident<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;First of all, I would like to say how grateful I am to get to where I am today,&#8221; he wrote on social media.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry if I haven&#8217;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<p>&#8220;I love playing for our little kingdom. I&#8217;m back at home at the moment and I&#8217;m in a good place now. My recovery is going well and hopefully I can keep ticking all of the boxes that I need.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And to the Storm fans, in God&#8217;s timing &#8216;I&#8217;ll be back soon&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>        &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n        &#13;<br \/>\n                        &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; One month after suffering a career-threatening brain injury, Melbourne Storm back-rower Eliesa Katoa admits that he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-317906","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\/317906","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=317906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}