![\"Sickening](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/512bd982fa745f45d5662d79fbbcd670.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nFormer NRL front rower Josh Aloiai has distanced himself from Saturday night\u2019s controversial Run Nation event held at the Hordern Pavilion after he witnessed first-hand the danger of the shocking new \u201csport\u201d.<\/p>\n
Aloiai, who has 164 NRL games to his name, worked as a coach at Run Nation 2, at which several competitors suffered sickening knockouts. <\/p>\n
The former Manly forward admits it was a mistake to sign on for the gig.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter coaching at RNC last night, that\u2019s not something I could ever be involved in again,\u201d Aloiai said on Sunday. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to attack individuals, but last night, as someone who\u2019s played NRL the last 10 or 11 years, and is in the coaching space now, I could not do that again. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like you\u2019re preparing dudes to go and get their heads knocked off and get brain bleeds, then tap them on the back and squirt water on their face.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is no reflection of my perception of the athletes. They have my respect \u2013 they\u2019re the toughest dudes. <\/p>\n
\u201cTo get out there and do that, they\u2019re insane and they have all my respect in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore I got involved, my gut told me not to do it, so I\u2019m the first one to blame. I should\u2019ve listened to my gut and not got involved, but I did, I regret it and I feel like an idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Aloiai said everyone involved in the event did everything they could to make the event as safe as possible, but is adamant the activity itself is too dangerous to continue. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith this concept, it\u2019s impossible,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s just no way you can set the rules safe enough for these thing not to happen. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re running with the ball and you\u2019ve got a 135 kilo guy off the ground, airborne pretty much, flying his shoulder at you, and they get it wrong but this much, it\u2019s either your chest or your chin and you\u2019re just flipping the coin every time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re on the other end and someone raises their elbow, you\u2019re getting knocked out. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s too many things you can\u2019t control, even with the ruleset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aloiai attended to two competitors who were knocked unconscious in front a sold out crowd. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was moments where I was holding these dudes who\u2019d just gotten knocked clean out, and they\u2019re snoring in front of a whole stadium of people yelling and I\u2019m like, \u2018What the heck am I doing here?\u2019\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBefore I came in, I had a bad feeling about the concept, and they said they had heaps of stuff in place to look after the players. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I\u2019ll give it a try, maybe the new rulesets will clean it up a bit. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really disappointed that I went and got involved. In the end, it went against everything I believe in. That\u2019s why I\u2019m disappointed in myself. I regret being involved. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are going to get angry with me, especially the people involved and I understand, and I\u2019ll probably get backlash, but I have to get this off my chest. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hoped it was going to be different, but it wasn\u2019t and I was out there promoting it as RNC staff and I regret doing that. I apologise.\u201d<\/p>\n
One competitor, Champ Betham \u2013 who proposed to his partner after his contest \u2013 admitted that the pay isn\u2019t great when asked whether he\u2019ll participate in future Run it Straight events. <\/p>\n
Aloiai said the reward isn\u2019t worth the risk of injury, or worse. <\/p>\n
\u201cOut of respect I\u2019m not gonna talk about purses, but I do know, and trust me it\u2019s not worth it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NRL front rower Josh Aloiai has distanced himself from Saturday night\u2019s controversial Run Nation event held at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,689,28350,148136,124936,2105,238775,761,762,673,158,677,238776,85,238777,670,238774,787],"class_list":["post-466978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-brendan-bradford","tag-coaching-space","tag-front-rower","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-kilo-guy","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-new-south-wales","tag-nrl","tag-oceania","tag-sickening-knockouts","tag-sports","tag-squirt-water","tag-sydney","tag-toughest-dudes","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466978","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=466978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}