Love Rugby League revealed earlier this year<\/a> that Leeds Rhinos were among the clubs who were looking into a move for Lodge.<\/p>\nBut the controversial prop decided to spurn interest from England in order to carry on his NRL career and begin a fresh chapter with the Cowboys in 2026.<\/p>\n
Lodge, though, rejected any suggestions that North Queensland had offered him a \u2018lifeline\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople call it a lifeline, but I was always alive,\u201d Lodge said. \u201cI had a top 30 deal at Manly, a club that was five minutes down the road from my family\u2019s house. I chose the Cowboys because I still care about and love my footy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew deep down, moving away from my comfort zone and making some sacrifices, would be the best thing for me. I\u2019ve prepared like a park footy player, but played in the hardest competition in the world for a couple of years now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I owed it to myself to get in the best shape I can and see what I can do at the Cowboys. I\u2019m excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move came after Lodge left long-time agent Isaac Moses and opted to field offers from elsewhere. \u201cI left my long-term manager (Moses),\u201d Lodge added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have an agent for a while but a few weeks ago I engaged someone else and they brought me a few deals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved it at Manly. It was my local team. I had a deal there but they made it clear the Souths prop (Davvy) Moale was their priority signing this year and they\u2019ve obviously signed him for four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cowboys was definitely the hardest move, logistically, but something about it felt right. Their squad excites me. And I thought it would help my footy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Queensland Cowboys forward Matt Lodge has revealed that he rejected interest from Super League in favour of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-345472","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\/345472","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=345472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}