{"id":96673,"date":"2025-08-27T16:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T16:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96673\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T16:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T16:11:07","slug":"sam-tomkins-catalans-rugby-league-legend-retires-for-second-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96673\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Tomkins: Catalans’ rugby league legend retires for second time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Tomkins has announced his retirement from rugby league following the termination of his Catalans Dragons contract by mutual consent.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old England international said in 2023<\/a> that he was retiring from the sport after helping the French club to their first Grand Final, which they lost to his former club Wigan Warriors.<\/p>\n

That first ‘retirement’ was due to persistent knee problems which had dogged him, but an improvement in his physical fitness led to him returning to Catalans<\/a> in July 2024.<\/p>\n

He signed a one-year extension<\/a> at the end of last season, but two months into the current campaign announced he would quit for good at its conclusion, only to now bring that forward.<\/p>\n

Tomkins has developed an alternative career as a Sky Sports pundit, with his brother Joel, the Catalans coach, suggesting he would not be joining his coaching team when he ends his playing career.<\/p>\n

Tomkins had a glittering career, winning three Super League titles, two League Leaders’ Shields, two Challenge Cups and a World Club Challenge with Wigan before helping the Dragons land the League Leaders’ Shield in 2021 and reach two Grand Finals.<\/p>\n

He also scored 18 tries in 29 appearances for England and was named Man of Steel on two occasions.<\/p>\n

His nine seasons with Wigan were punctuated by two years with New Zealand Warriors in the NRL, where he was a big success, scoring 14 tries in 37 appearances before succumbing to injury and homesickness and returning to Wigan.<\/p>\n

In all, he scored 167 tries and 1,218 points in 290 Super League appearances, and is the third-highest points scorer in the Dragons’ history.<\/p>\n

Tomkins said: “Today I am announcing I have retired\u2026 for good this time! <\/p>\n

“Thanks to [Dragons chairman] Bernard [Guasch] for this opportunity and all the players, staff and supporters for what has been an amazing seven years full of great memories.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Tomkins has announced his retirement from rugby league following the termination of his Catalans Dragons contract by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-96673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96673","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=96673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}