{"id":417417,"date":"2026-05-08T04:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417417\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T04:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:45:07","slug":"damien-cook-makes-shock-contract-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417417\/","title":{"rendered":"Damien Cook makes shock contract call"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/nrl\/teams\/st-george-illawarra-dragons\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St George Illawarra Dragons<\/a> dummy half will leave the club at the end of 2026, bound for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/super-league\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">English Super League<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cook, who was in negotiatgions with the Dragons previously, was forced to sit and wait on his future after the Dragons put an internal contract freeze across their playing group following a dismal start to the campaign, which saw <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/coaches\/shane-flanagan\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Shane Flanagan<\/a> sacked after the seventh straight loss.<\/p>\n<p>Channel 9s Danny Weidler has revealed that the hooker has signed a two-year contract with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/super-league\/british-teams\/castleford-tigers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Castleford Tigers<\/a> and will relocate around the world for the 2027 and 2028 campaigns before calling it a day on his career.<\/p>\n<p>The 34-year-old will finish his sporting career in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/super-league\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Super League<\/a>, but not without aiming to amass over 250 appearances in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NRL<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The veteran currently sits at 248 games, playing most of his career at the Rabbitohs before returning to his debut club, the Dragons, last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Dragons have had a tumultuous start to the season, and that continued on Anzac Day, with the club losing their eighth straight game in a horror loss to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerotackle.com\/nrl\/teams\/sydney-roosters\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sydney Roosters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The club is yet to confirm the news.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>        &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n        &#13;<br \/>\n                        &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; St George Illawarra Dragons dummy half will leave the club at the end of 2026, bound&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-417417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417417","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=417417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}