{"id":958046,"date":"2026-11-09T09:52:29","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T09:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/958046\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T09:52:29","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T09:52:29","slug":"nrl-news-2026-josiah-karapani-suspended-two-games-2027-season-due-to-drink-driving-offence-from-june-brisbane-broncos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/958046\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL News 2026 | Josiah Karapani suspended two games, 2027 season due to drink-driving offence from June, Brisbane Broncos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josiah Karapani will miss the first two games of the 2027 NRL<\/a> season after the league handed him a two-game sanction over a June drink-driving offence<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Karapani will also be required to undergo education and training as advised by the league and was handed a fine for $1500, which was suspended for a period of 12 months. <\/p>\n

\"Josiah<\/p>\n

Josiah Karapani (right) has been suspended.\u00a0Bradley Kanaris<\/p>\n

The Broncos<\/a> previously stood down Karapani over the same incident, prompting a please explain from the Rugby League Players Association<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In June, Karapani was stopped by Queensland Police on the Pacific Motorway after he was detected speeding at nearly 20km over the limit. <\/p>\n

He was breathalysed and registered a blood alcohol reading of 0.037 \u2013 above the provisional licence holder limit.<\/p>\n

He also received multiple other infringement notices for other offences including \u201cdriving an unregistered vehicle\u201d, which prompted the Brisbane club to notify NRL\u2019s Integrity Unit. <\/p>\n

The Broncos took matters into their own hands, standing down Karapani for Brisbane\u2019s round 18 game against Cronulla<\/a> and instead played him in the Queensland Cup<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But then the Queensland Rugby League<\/a> stepped in, banning Karapani from playing for one of the Broncos\u2019 feeder clubs in the Queensland Cup, prompting the RLPA investigation. <\/p>\n

In his court appearance in July, the winger pled guilty to the drink-driving offence, was fined $350 and disqualified from driving for three months. No conviction was recorded. <\/p>\n

Karapani will now be on the sidelines as Michael Maguire<\/a> aims to see his squad bounce back from a 14th-place finish in the 2026 season. The 24-year-old has a contract with the Broncos until the end of next season and, on November 1, entered NRL free agency for 2028 and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josiah Karapani will miss the first two games of the 2027 NRL season after the league handed him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":958047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-958046","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\/958046","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=958046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/958047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}