{"id":344303,"date":"2026-03-23T22:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T22:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/344303\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T22:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T22:15:08","slug":"craig-bellamy-fears-eliesa-katoa-may-never-play-nrl-again-after-brain-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/344303\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig Bellamy fears Eliesa Katoa may never play NRL again after brain injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll play next year \u2026 I don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll play again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe doctors haven\u2019t made that decision, and I don\u2019t know when that decision will get made, to be quite honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI imagine after a certain amount of time he\u2019ll have more tests and go from there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a major injury, and we want him to live the rest of his life in a normal way, so fingers crossed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019d love to have him back playing footy and playing with us. He was one hell of a player.<\/p>\n

Katoa last month<\/a> said he was recovering well and was still eyeing off a return to the Storm squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to let everyone know that I\u2019m healthy now,\u201d he told the Storm website.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been training hard the last two or three months with no symptoms, so I\u2019m going great at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bellamy said Katoa continues to work with the squad, taking on a role with the forward pack.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve given him a role with our edge back rowers to take them under his wing \u2013 young Cooper Clarke,\u201d Bellamy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to give Eli a lot of wraps for that \u2013 even with Joey Chan and Valu [Lisati], he\u2019s helped them out a whole heap as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the good news.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll play next year \u2026 I don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll play again. \u201cThe doctors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,6030,183553,1596,1320,56606,6650,183554,28164,15258,82836,14731,7810,123,13631,111,139,577,69,10538,6327,213,673],"class_list":["post-344303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-again","tag-bellamy","tag-brain","tag-coach","tag-conceded","tag-craig","tag-eliesa","tag-fears","tag-injury","tag-katoa","tag-league","tag-may","tag-melbourne","tag-never","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nz","tag-play","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-storm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}