{"id":795549,"date":"2026-07-12T13:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T13:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/795549\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T13:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T13:22:16","slug":"nrl-news-2026-jai-arrow-watches-on-south-sydney-rabbitohs-win-newcastle-knights-comeback-nrl-biggest-birthday-bash-charity-the-wiggles-sing-happy-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/795549\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL News 2026: Jai Arrow watches on South Sydney Rabbitohs win, Newcastle Knights comeback, NRL Biggest Birthday Bash, charity, The Wiggles sing happy birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jai Arrow<\/a> was the NRL<\/a> guest of honour in the game between South Sydney and the Newcastle Knights<\/a>, with a VIP list of guests to celebrate his 31st birthday. <\/p>\n

With a guest list including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> and outgoing NRL CEO Andrew Abdo<\/a> looking on, Australian entertainment icons The Wiggles took to the field to hype the crowd during half-time at Stadium Australia.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jai Arrow celebrates cutting his birthday cake.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

Moments later, a massive birthday cake weighing nearly 120kg was wheeled onto the turf. <\/p>\n

The crowd donned custom birthday hats adorned with the name \u2018Arrow,\u2019 and The Wiggles led the stadium in a rendition of Happy Birthday dedicated to Arrow, with his wife and their young child standing by.<\/p>\n

The man of the hour watched on from the stands, after announcing his medical retirement in May following a diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease (MND)<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The devastating news prompted the league to create \u2018Jai July\u2019 to celebrate the former player and raise money for MND charities and Arrow\u2019s family. <\/p>\n

True to the theme of the weekend, South Sydney<\/a> players celebrated their tries with the iconic \u2018Arrow\u2019 celebration, a tribute that has been spotted across the league and beyond<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Rabbitohs were able to hold on to a 26-24 victory over the Knights, after Newcastle mounted a comeback that gave fans and Arrow an almighty scare. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m truly honoured to be here. I want to thank everyone from, me and my family, the bottom of our hearts,\u201d birthday guest Arrow said on Fox League. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe amount of support that we\u2019ve had is truly overwhelming.\u201d <\/p>\n

Arrow also brought out the State of Origin shield in the decider at Suncorp Stadium<\/a> on Wednesday – where NSW<\/a> took victory – and on Tuesday, announced he and his partner Berina had eloped<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jai Arrow was the NRL guest of honour in the game between South Sydney and the Newcastle Knights,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-795549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795549","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=795549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}