{"id":387834,"date":"2026-01-24T11:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T11:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/387834\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T11:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T11:05:10","slug":"rugby-league-legend-darren-lockyer-reveals-the-super-league-club-he-turned-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/387834\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby League legend Darren Lockyer reveals the Super League club he turned down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Rugby league legend Darren Lockyer has named the Super League side he turned down with the Australian explaining why he opted against a move to the northern hemisphere.<\/p>\n

Arguably the greatest player of all time but certainly a man who would feature in most top ten rankings, the Australian racked up 355 NRL appearances, all coming for Brisbane Broncos, with whom he won four Grand Finals.<\/p>\n

He also played a whopping 59 games for Australia and 36 for Queensland, captaining both country and state, before retiring in 2011 at the age of 34.<\/p>\n

Post-playing, he\u2019s remained active in rugby league with his most recent venture being part-ownership of London Broncos and when appearing on Sky Sports\u2019\u00a0The Bench Podcast\u00a0<\/a>to discuss that, he also revealed which Super League club he turned down.<\/p>\n

Lockyer played throughout the period where Super League was the far wealthier competition, however, he never made the switch despite multiple approaches, including from Leeds Rhinos.<\/p>\n

Darren Lockyer explains why he rejected Super League<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a few approaches from Super League clubs over the years, Leeds was one\u201d, he confirmed to Sky\u2019s Jenna Brooks, before going to explain just how attractive Super League was to so many NRL players at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, again we talked about it earlier, but back in those days, a lot of players would come over here at the end of their career to a) have the travel experience and b) because the money was significant.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were probably getting paid more here than you were in Australia but that\u2019s changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that, Lockyer still opted to hang up the boots and he revealed why: \u201cI decided (against Super League), I\u2019d just had my first child and had a lot of opportunities in the corporate world and I decided to hang the boots up.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that a 34-year-old Darren Lockyer would have absolutely torn Super League up and he\u2019d have been the biggest signing in the competition\u2019s history but it wasn\u2019t to be.<\/p>\n

Lockyer was also asked if he would have signed for his current club London if they existed back then in their current guise as a club with plenty of promise, something that prompted an honest and reflective answer.<\/p>\n

He responded: \u201cWe\u2019ve said this to our players, they\u2019ve taken a leap of faith on us, they\u2019ve uprooted their family to come here.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for me, it would have been a big risk to come over here in this situation as a player but I think London is a great city. It would have been a difficult decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out the latest episode of The Serious About Rugby League Show on our YouTube channel here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rugby league legend Darren Lockyer has named the Super League side he turned down with the Australian explaining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-387834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}