Former Melbourne star Ryan Papenhuyzen has revealed how a late season head knock against Brisbane was the key moment he decided to step away from the game and prioritise his health.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old 2020 premiership winner has provided an insight into the thinking behind his decision to leave the NRL a year early and not see out his contract with the Storm in 2026.<\/p>\n
He went as far as to say: “I think I have retired.”<\/p>\n
He outlined his reasoning on the “167 Podcast” with former teammates and close friends Jahrome Hughes and Cameron Munster.<\/p>\n
Former Storm star Ryan Papenhuyzen.\u00a0Photo by Bradley Kanaris\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
While he confirmed there had been talks with the now postponed R360 rugby union competition, that was not the rationale behind his brave call.<\/p>\n
After battling injury and concussion in his short but always electrifying 113-game NRL career, it was an illumination moment at Suncorp Stadium in round 27 last year that caused the deep-thinking Papenhuyzen to consider his future.<\/p>\n
“I’ll start from the Brisbane game in the last round,” Papenhuyzen said.<\/p>\n
“I had that head knock in the last minutes and went off the field and was in the sheds, pretty emotional. I was rattled.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think I’ve ever really cried in front of you boys, but I was in the sheds trying to hide it.<\/p>\n
“In that moment it was kind of like, what am I doing? At what cost do you play footy for? I just had one of those moments.”<\/p>\n
The 2020 Clive Churchill Medal winner said there was a “fleeting” aspect to his emotions but he spoke to a mindset coach and in the ensuing weeks settled on the determination that “whatever happens I am having a year off”.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t play the next week but within, I knew I was having a year off next year. One thing led to the next, we got to the grand final and then we lost,” he said.<\/p>\n
Part of him toyed with the idea if the Storm did lose he would go again and play in 2026.<\/p>\n
After the grand final loss, however, he said “it didn’t change my feeling of it at all.”<\/p>\n
“We had discussions (about) walking away from something quite lucrative and not going to have that security, but at what cost? My health is something I really prioritise,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I had to look within and if it’s not serving its purpose anymore … that was my big realisation.”<\/p>\n
Papenhuyzen has great depth to him as a man. In 2022 he spoke about his interest in Buddhist teachings, practising mindfulness and being grateful for everything in life. He kept a diary each day of his innermost thoughts.<\/p>\n
“I know R360 … was definitely in the talks and definitely something I was keen on but I think that incident in Brisbane in the last round was (telling me) everything happens for a reason. The universe puts you in situations,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was … ‘you need to make this decision, be strong with it and stick with it’. So now I think I’m retired.”<\/p>\n
While the security of an NRL career was “hard to leave” he also asked himself a key question.<\/p>\n
“But what else in life do I want to achieve? That was helping people,” he said.<\/p>\n
“In what capacity? I love psychology and I guess I love new experiences so what can I channel that into?<\/p>\n
“I think I’m enjoying what I’m doing now and I’m going to give that my all.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Melbourne star Ryan Papenhuyzen has revealed how a late season head knock against Brisbane was the key…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-427616","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\/427616","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=427616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}