{"id":378416,"date":"2025-12-29T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T15:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/378416\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T15:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T15:20:08","slug":"josh-hodge-newcastle-re-sign-england-a-full-back-from-exeter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/378416\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Hodge: Newcastle re-sign England A full-back from Exeter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hodge, a former England Under-20 international, has scored 29 tries in his 89 appearances for the Chiefs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As a product of the Newcastle academy, Hodge&#8217;s homecoming represents a turning of the tide of recent seasons, with the club&#8217;s sporting general manager Neil McIlroy keen to see the deal as a statement to their emerging talent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s understandable frustration around the number of players who have developed in Newcastle&#8217;s academy, but who have moved away to fulfil their ambitions,&#8221; McIlroy said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We are committed to Newcastle Red Bulls being a club where homegrown talent can flourish, so that the Josh Hodges of the future will not feel the need to go elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He is a quality English player who will significantly strengthen our squad and anyone who watches Prem rugby will be aware what a huge talent he is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;At full-back or wing he has pace to burn and a fantastic kicking game, but in addition to that there is a wider statement about us wanting this to be a club where English talent can prosper.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Newcastle have lost all eight of their Prem matches this season but picked up their first losing bonus point in the 36-27 away defeat by Bristol on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hodge, a former England Under-20 international, has scored 29 tries in his 89 appearances for the Chiefs. As&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-378416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378416","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=378416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}