Huddersfield Giants hooker Nathan Peats has revealed the reasons for ending his 13-year playing career, as well as his plans to return to Australia in the New Year.
Last month, Peats decided to bring his illustrious playing career to a close, in which he racked over 230 appearances for some of the biggest clubs in the sport- including South Sydney Rabbitohs and New South Wales in State of Origin.
Speaking exclusively to Serious About Rugby League on the decision to walk away from professional Rugby League, he spoke honestly about the heart-breaking reason for retiring
“It came down to a couple of things, mainly my Mum has been battling cancer for the second time and I want to be closer to her and support her.” Peats said
He also explained: “other things were my body wasn’t holding up as well as it used to, first time in my career where my body was really struggling to get up for games and training and lastly my performances started to dip at that stage of season. I felt like I started year off in decent form, then it dropped at that point where our season started declining.”
During the interview, Peats went into more detail about when he came to the decision: “It was maybe just before the halfway point of the season where my wife and I started having conversations about it at home.”
For the past three seasons, Peats has played in Super League-representing the then Leigh Centurions and Toulouse; however the majority of his time in Europe has been spent in the claret and gold of the Huddersfield Giants.
Peats had two spells at the John Smiths. The first came halfway through the 2021 season, and then he re-joined the West Yorkshire side prior to the start of the 2023 campaign.
Now his time in professional Rugby League has come to an end, Peats told Serious About Rugby League he intends to return to Australia in the New Year, but has to overcome one small hurdle.
“We are here in England for another few months. We have a dog here and he can’t enter Australia until early January because Australia is really strict with entry requirements for pets, but also the house we own on the Gold Coast, we have people renting it and that lease runs until early January as well. So we stuck in the cold for a little bit more.”
