{"id":537014,"date":"2026-03-13T04:25:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T04:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537014\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T04:25:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T04:25:15","slug":"nrl-2026-nathan-merritts-sad-revelation-after-sudden-cancer-diagnosis-south-sydney-rabbitohs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537014\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL 2026: Nathan Merritt\u2019s sad revelation after sudden cancer diagnosis, South Sydney Rabbitohs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbitohs legend Nathan Merritt has revealed he doesn\u2019t know how long he has left to live after being diagnosed with two forms of stage 4 cancer.<\/p>\n

The 42-year-old received both an oesophageal and liver cancer diagnosis within four months of each other.<\/p>\n

The father-of-five, who has children aged between 11 and 21, was first diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in November after having pain in his stomach before being given a fresh diagnosis in February.<\/p>\n

The Bunnies icon said it was tough news for his family to take, but vowed to fight until the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been diagnosed with stage four cancer \u2013 oesophagus and liver cancer,\u201d Merritt revealed to Daily Mail Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tough pill to swallow for my kids and family. But it\u2019s good \u2013 it\u2019s going to be a tough one, but I\u2019m going to fight through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merritt says he only found out a few weeks ago that the cancer was stage 4 and said it\u2019s a matter of staying alive as long as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of this treatment is now just about trying to maintain it with chemo, and doing my best to stay alive as long as possible,\u201d Merritt said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a tough few years for the Souths legend, who was placed on life support after collapsing<\/a> due to an adverse reaction to prescribed pain medication on October 6, 2023.<\/p>\n

More recently, he was involved in a Sydney pub brawl in February last year that saw him bloodied and knocked to the ground. <\/a>He later plead guilty to once count of affray.<\/p>\n

Merritt was also fined $1,500 after he blew more than three times the legal limit while behind the wheel, resulting in him spending a night behind bars in April last year.<\/p>\n

Merritt retired in 2014 as one of the most popular players the club has fielded since the turn of the century.<\/p>\n

The prolific try scorer ended his 237-game NRL career with 154 tries.<\/p>\n

He is among the club\u2019s most celebrated figures after breaking Benny Wearing\u2019s 81-year-old try-scoring record at the club.<\/p>\n

The former NRL winger was the league\u2019s leading tryscorer for three seasons and was only the 9th player in the history of the sport to score 150 total tries.<\/p>\n

Merritt made two appearances for the PM\u2019s XIII and scored two tries as well as three games for the Indigenous All-Stars.<\/p>\n

Originally published as \u2018Stay alive as long as possible\u2019: Nathan Merritt\u2019s sad revelation after sudden cancer diagnosis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rabbitohs legend Nathan Merritt has revealed he doesn\u2019t know how long he has left to live after being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-537014","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\/537014","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=537014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}