Ryan Papenhuyzen has broken his silence on the decision to step away from the NRL, insisting he is retired for good.<\/p>\n
Papenhuyzen shocked the rugby league world by announcing he was taking time away from the sport, despite playing a key role in Melbourne Storm\u2019s route to the NRL Grand Final last year.<\/p>\n
He was expected to make a return to professional sport at some point but speaking on his 167 podcast, he suggested his race was run.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t even know where to start, but I\u2019ll start from the Brisbane game in the last round,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that game, pretty much I had that head knock in the last minutes and obviously went off the field and was in the sheds, pretty emotional, I was rattled. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever really cried in front of you boys, but I was in the sheds trying to hide it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 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, it was fleeting and over the weekend, I processed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the catalyst for the conversations that went in place for the next few weeks. The plan was always, after that, whatever happens I\u2019m having a year off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was always a bit of me that thought if we lose, I\u2019d want to come back and play again and if we won, it would be good to just go off and do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t change my feeling of it at all. I\u2019ve done all I can, I\u2019ve tried hard and put in everything I can\u2026 if I keep playing this game, at what cost?\u201d<\/p>\n
He then went on to admit that he cannot envisage himself returning to the field, in rugby league or R360, as was speculated to be his next destination at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I said a year [not playing] but at this stage, I don\u2019t actually feel like I would play at all. I think I\u2019m enjoying what I\u2019m doing now and I\u2019m going to give that my all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know R360 [was there] and that was definitely in the talks and definitely something I was keen on, but I think that incident in Brisbane in the last round was just sort of like, everything happens for a reason, the universe puts you in situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nearly like \u2018no, you need to make this decision, be strong with it, stick with it\u2019\u2026 so now I think I\u2019m retired.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Papenhuyzen has broken his silence on the decision to step away from the NRL, insisting he is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-427700","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\/427700","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=427700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}