Tommy Makinson will head to the NRL in 2026 to begin his post-playing rugby league career, he has revealed.<\/p>\n
Makinson\u2019s incredible and trophy-laden career drew to a close on Friday night as Catalans were heavily beaten by Wigan, on a night which saw the Warriors go on to win the League Leaders\u2019 Shield and secure top spot in Super League.<\/p>\n
His 15-year career as a professional saw him win every domestic trophy on honour, represent his country on numerous occasions and also win the Golden Boot and be crowned the world\u2019s best player.<\/p>\n
But having spent two seasons in France, Makinson will not return to England \u2013 he is instead going 12,000 miles away to start life in the NRL with an as-yet unnamed club.<\/p>\n
Makinson heading to NRL<\/p>\n
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game on Friday night, he revealed that his next move will see him head to Australia to take up an off-field role with a top NRL team.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI\u2019m heading to Australia in November and doing a few bits.. that will all come out soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really proud of what I\u2019ve got lined up, so I\u2019m really excited. I aren\u2019t playing in the NRL, that\u2019s for sure! But hopefully I\u2019ll be doing some good work down there with some good people over there.. so it should be good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makinson\u2019s links with a number of current head coaches in the NRL, including Dolphins boss Kristian Woolf and Newcastle coach Justin Holbrook, would see those two clubs be the obvious destinations should he work with a specific club.<\/p>\n
Ben Garcia signs off from Catalans<\/p>\n
Makinson was not the only Catalans star to sign off as a player on Friday evening \u2013 with long-serving Dragons forward Ben Garcia finishing his own impressive career.<\/p>\n
Garcia will take up a role as sporting director of Catalans and admits he is prioritising ensuring the stream of French talent continues to come into the team in the years ahead.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt was my dream come true to play for this club. I\u2019m really proud of what I\u2019ve done. It\u2019s been a lot of work and now I\u2019m going to stay in the club and I\u2019ve got a lot of work to do now.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there were a lot of French boys on the field tonight and they\u2019ve got a great future. I will be sporting director so I will make sure the sporting side will be good. I need to find a new Julian Bousquet, I think we\u2019ve got some with Guillermo Aispuro-Bichet and Leo Darrelatour but we need to put them in a good position to have a good future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tommy Makinson will head to the NRL in 2026 to begin his post-playing rugby league career, he has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767740","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\/767740","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=767740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}