{"id":619368,"date":"2026-06-03T18:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/619368\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T18:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:44:08","slug":"matty-lees-st-helens-prop-will-get-clean-slate-with-exit-to-png-nrl-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/619368\/","title":{"rendered":"Matty Lees: St Helens prop &#8216;will get clean slate with exit to PNG NRL team&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lees has made almost 200 appearances for St Helens having joined them as a 16-year-old,  making his senior debut at the age of 18.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The challenge of playing in the NRL, as well as its financial benefit, means he leaves with Rowley&#8217;s blessing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The Papua New Guinea train motors on. What a great servant to the club he&#8217;s been,&#8221; Rowley continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The lure of tax-free money by the bucket-load is not one to be sniffed at. It&#8217;s a short career and everybody must make the most of it, so we wish him well in that and we hope he reaps the benefits of it, which will be two things.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;One, he&#8217;ll be challenging himself in a different competition and different lifestyle, and two, he reaps the financial benefits as well, which I have no doubt that he will.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lees has made almost 200 appearances for St Helens having joined them as a 16-year-old, making his senior&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-619368","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\/619368","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=619368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}