{"id":39383,"date":"2025-08-01T12:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39383\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T12:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:56:08","slug":"louis-rees-zammit-returns-to-rugby-union-after-calling-time-on-nfl-dream-rugby-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39383\/","title":{"rendered":"Louis Rees-Zammit returns to rugby union after calling time on NFL dream | Rugby union"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Louis Rees-Zammit has ended his American adventure and announced that he plans to return to rugby after spending 18 months in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/nfl\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NFL<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Rees-Zammit signed an active roster deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars for the 2025 season after being part of their practice squad for the 2024 season and travelled to London for the games against the Chicago Bears and New England Patriots in October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">The 24-year-old made 32 appearances for Wales before announcing in January 2024 that he would retire from rugby union in order <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2024\/jan\/16\/louis-rees-zammit-wales-nfl-huge-gamble-american-football\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to pursue his dream of playing in the NFL<\/a> via its International Player Pathway Program.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Rees-Zammit said in a post on Instagram: \u201cI\u2019ve got an exciting announcement to make! I\u2019ve decided to leave the NFL and return to rugby! It\u2019s been a great experience, but it\u2019s time to come home. I\u2019ve decided that this is the best time to make this decision to give myself time to get everything in place for next season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">\u201cThere\u2019s only one thing that\u2019s on my mind, that\u2019s coming back to rugby and doing what I do best. I can\u2019t explain how excited I am! There\u2019ll be more news to come soon but for now, see you soon rugby fans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"#EmailSignup-skip-link-5\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1xjndtj\">The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week&#8217;s action reviewed<\/p>\n<p>Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/help\/privacy-policy\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/privacy\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a> and <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/terms\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n<p id=\"EmailSignup-skip-link-5\" tabindex=\"0\" aria-label=\"after newsletter promotion\" role=\"note\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">The news is likely to come as a welcome boost to the recently-appointed Wales head coach, Steve Tandy, who takes over a side that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2025\/jul\/12\/rugby-union-wales-japan-scotland-fiji-france-all-blacks\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ended an 18-match losing streak<\/a> that lasted almost two years with a hard-fought win over Japan in Kobe last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Louis Rees-Zammit has ended his American adventure and announced that he plans to return to rugby after spending&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-39383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}