{"id":423521,"date":"2026-01-19T16:08:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/423521\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T16:08:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:08:21","slug":"todays-my-last-day-nrl-star-cooper-johns-dramatically-quits-kyle-and-jackie-o-show-on-first-day-back-from-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/423521\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Today\u2019s my last day\u2019: NRL star Cooper Johns dramatically quits Kyle and Jackie O show on first day back from holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"

NRL star Cooper Johns sensationally quit his role on KIIS FM\u2019s Kyle and Jackie O Show minutes into his first day back from the Christmas holidays.<\/p>\n

The former Melbourne Storm halfback and five-eighth, 26, joined the radio show as a full-time sports reporter in 2024 and quickly became a popular addition to the hosting team.<\/p>\n

Cooper, who is the youngest son of rugby league legend Matty Johns, was predicted to achieve great things at the station and regularly stood in for Kyle Sandilands in the main hosting seat.<\/p>\n

\"Jackie<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is my last day,\u201d Cooper announced to listeners 10 minutes into Monday morning\u2019s show.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmongst some other reasons, you know, I feel like it\u2019s time for the caterpillar to\u2026grow its wings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kyle then divulged that Cooper was leaving because he had been offered other opportunities which \u201cpay more\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCooper rang me over the holidays, and the real reason is he\u2019s got other opportunities that pay more,\u201d the 54-year-old revealed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Bro, my motto is where there\u2019s a till, there\u2019s a way\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s with his sponsors and more opportunities to do very little work and earn more money,\u201d Kyle added after Jackie \u2018O\u2019 Henderson quizzed him on what the opportunities were.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, this is your last day?\u201d Jackie asked, to which Cooper replied: \u201cCorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGonna miss you guys,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In January 2024, Cooper confirmed that he had quit the NRL at the age of just 24. His career included stints with the Melbourne Storm and Manly Sea Eagles.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoved my time in the NRL but after some late nights pondering over a couple of schooners of Malibu and coke no sugar, I\u2019ve decided to step away for a bit and switch out the leather pig skin for a microphone,\u201d Cooper wrote in an Instagram post.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Weak\u2019<\/p>\n

He thanked his teammates and his coach, Craig Bellamy, and took a swipe at his famous father and uncle, Andrew Johns.<\/p>\n

Cooper also hinted that the door remained open for a future return to the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally to my family, who cause me nothing but stress\u2026 get f****d,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this the end who knows\u2026one thing I do know is rugby league is the greatest game of all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper\u2019s departure comes after Kyle and Jackie O\u2019s breakfast suffered a large staff turnover in recent months.<\/p>\n

According to reports, the KIIS FM show lost around a dozen key staff members following its launch in Melbourne in April 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Staff members included executive producer Pedro Vitola, digital content producer Joshua Fox, and KIIS FM program director Tony Aldridge.<\/p>\n

It is alleged that the high turnover of staff was contributing to a \u201cpressure cooker\u201d environment behind the scenes, news.com.au reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NRL star Cooper Johns sensationally quit his role on KIIS FM\u2019s Kyle and Jackie O Show minutes into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,222688,72253,222689,72255,53493,761,762,158,85,16903],"class_list":["post-423521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cooper-johns","tag-jackie-o-henderson","tag-kiis-fm","tag-kyle-and-jackie-o","tag-kyle-sandilands","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports","tag-the-kyle-and-jackie-o-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423521","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=423521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}