Blues forward Cameron Suafoa has announced he won’t play again due to his cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n
The Auckland-based Super Rugby Pacific team released a video overnight of\u00a0Suafoa, who is just 27.<\/p>\n
“I just wanted to give you a little bit of an update on my situation,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve decided to finish playing rugby officially, decided to retire, (with) the unfortunate news that my cancer had spread and it was terminal now.”<\/p>\n
Suafoa was first diagnosed in November 2023 with high-grade sarcoma – a form of cancer in his connective tissue – and underwent six weeks of radiation treatment after an operation removed a malignant tumour in his back.<\/p>\n
But after a successful recovery he returned to rugby, playing and captaining North Harbour in the NPC in 2024, before securing a spot back in the Blues for the 2025 Super Rugby season becoming a regular starter.<\/p>\n
However, after a second cancer diagnosis, he was forced to sit out the 2025 NPC season.<\/p>\n
He said he will continue to fight.<\/p>\n
“I will be going through a different type of battle soon so I start having chemo in the coming days.”<\/p>\n
Suafoa, who was born and raised in Auckland, played 31 games for the Blues, while also having stints with Tasman and Auckland in NPC rugby.<\/p>\n
He played one game for the Maori All Blacks in 2022.<\/p>\n
“It was everything,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was definitely the best job in the world. There is nowhere else you can sit with your work colleagues, have a yarn, and go out with everyone working towards a same goal.<\/p>\n
“There’s not too many workplaces that feel like it’s a family… and definitely will miss it.”<\/p>\n
The Blues said they continued to send all their love, thoughts and support to Suafoa, his wife Britt and the rest of his wh\u0101nau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blues forward Cameron Suafoa has announced he won’t play again due to his cancer diagnosis. The Auckland-based Super…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-362105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362105","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=362105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}