NRL veteran Kieran Foran has opened up on his 2016 decision to walk away from the game and leave behind a contract worth nearly $5 million at the Eels, revealing he “didn’t want to be alive, let alone be a footballer.”
Foran had joined Parramatta at the end of 2015 after seven years and a premiership at Manly.
Hailed as the club’s answer to their long-term struggles at halfback, Foran would play just nine games in blue and gold before making the call to walk away from rugby league.
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“I think now when I look back on it, I just had so much success as a young guy and everything had come to me so fast that I just hadn’t grown up,” Foran told Sporting News' Ebbs & Flows podcast; available online now.
“I don’t think I had grown up and I think I was caught in just living life and doing it my way and ‘I’ll be right’ mentality and in the end I think everything just came crashing down on me.
“I just couldn’t fulfil my role as a footy player, there was too much going on in my life at the time that it would have been wrong of me to sit there at Parra on $1.2 million a year and collect my pay cheque and not be able to fulfil my role as a captain and leader.”
Foran, then 25, said his personal challenges off the field came to a head when he no longer had football to focus on.
“I was going through some relationship struggles off the field with my ex partner and kids and then I was battling some of my own personal demons in terms of my drinking and gambling and things like that that had probably gotten slightly out of control,” he recalled.
“The one constant that had always allowed me to get through, even the previous years was that I always had footy. At Parra, I took a couple weeks off to try and get myself right in a rehabilitation clinic and I came back and I did my shoulder and I did it bad.
“I just think knowing that I had a season-ending injury in round 12, it just threw me. I wasn’t in the mental state to cope with not having rugby league.
“In the end, the thought of getting through that, without footy, was just too much for me. I need to get completely away because the one constant that I have relied on for so long in my life was that 80 minutes every single week.
“I just went, ‘I can’t do this, not at the moment.’ I don’t even want to be alive, let alone turn up to training. And that was what I was being asked to do, and rightfully so.
“I was the captain of Parramatta, I’d gone there as a big-money signing, I was their halfback, they’d given me time off to fight my personal demons, then I’d done my shoulder and I didn’t even want to be near a training paddock.”
The Kiwi playmaker eventually found his way back to the NRL, returning in round five of the 2017 season with the Warriors.
Foran said it came after he identified the positive role rugby league played in his life.
“Over time I realised that footy was the one thing that I did need in my life and that I still had stuff left to do in my footy career,” Foran said.
“At that time, when I walked away, I was done. I didn’t care if I didn’t lace another boot. That’s how mentally ill I was and just off it.
“I think as the months wore on and I got slightly clearer in my head I was able to find the love and enjoyment in it again and sort of reflect and go, ‘Maybe footy is good for me.’”
In a wide-ranging interview, Foran, who turns 34 next month, touched on his time at Manly alongside Daly Cherry-Evans, how he developed his style of play, captaining the Kiwis and working with the talent-stacked young Titans squad.
On his decision to leave the Sea Eagles in 2015, Foran revealed the impact of former Eels coach Brad Arthur.
“It was a bit like the perfect storm,” he said.
“I probably wasn’t enjoying my time at Manly like I had the previous years.
“The fire wasn’t lit the way that it had been and I almost felt like the change was needed, from a footy point of view. I probably felt at the time that leaving Manly was the right thing for me as a footballer.
“As much as I loved Manly and I wanted to be loyal and stay and be a one-club man, that didn’t overpower the sense that I wasn’t enjoying myself the way that I had in the previous years.
“I remember just thinking, ‘I think I need to change, I need a new challenge, I need a new environment.’ And for me, Parramatta was that.
“Brad Arthur played a significant part in that. He’d been an assistant coach at Manly in 2013, we’d gone to the grand final against the Roosters. He was assistant coach under Toovs, they’d done a great job.
“I think when I looked at the clubs that were interested at the time, that stood out to me. Parramatta are a big club, really good up and coming roster.
“I thought he’s someone that can take my game to a new level. He’s someone that can really push me and change me and turn me into the footballer I wanted to become.
“I remember thinking, ‘Geez, this is a good change. This will be a successful club and footy team to be involved in.’”
As it turned out, Foran’s private life and shoulder injury combined to end his time at Parramatta in dramatic fashion.
Now an elder statesman in rugby league terms, Foran tries to use his experiences to help his young teammates facing similar challenges.
“I’ll often have chats to guys at training and that and say, ‘How’s everything going in your life?’ Things like that, stuff that you wouldn’t really talk about 10-15 years ago and open those conversations up,” he said.
“It’s always good to know what’s going on in people’s private lives, what are they up to behind the scenes.
“I think if you can understand and get to know each other better, you can see the signs and triggers if someone is struggling.”
