Life can change for professional athletes in the blink of an eye, just ask Nathan Peats.
One minute he was playing a key role for a Parramatta side that had started the 2016 season well and was in the City Origin side.
The next minute, he was forced out the back door of the Eels after a salary cap drama where the club were docked all their points and needed to balance the books in order to play for points in the season.
He later remarked he regretted "putting his body in the wrong spot a few times for the club," and he expanded on his feelings on Sporting News' Ebbs and Flows podcast.
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"I didn't talk to Brad Arthur for years, I was off everyone," Peats said.
"I felt like I got treated like s**t, I was like, 'why did I have to be the one to leave?' I busted my arse off for that club.
"I love the club, the fans love me - they've always been nice those fans - but I broke my neck playing with that team, I had five surgeries playing for that team."
Peats reveals his everything on the line approach at Parramatta came from the great respect he had for his coach and club at the time, and playing the way Arthur wanted to play.
"I know I played in a way that Brad wanted me to play," Peats said.
"How I done my elbow is [by] shooting from marker and [going] whack from marker, I used to play that physical [game], and that's how I played.
"Then I got to the Titans and I just stopped doing it, I was like 'f**k that.'
"I just loved Brad so much and the club so much, I was willing to go through [anything]... there's some games where I was jamming people, because I was just loving the contact side of it.
"Then I got to the Titans and was like, 'I'm not f*****g doing this anymore!"
Peats can still be proud of the career he had, playing for three NRL clubs and representing NSW in the State of Origin, but it would be one ultimately defined by injuries; Peats is even recovering from an operation on his shoulder right now, as he is still in action at a semi-professional level in Queensland.
Whilst a broken neck may have been his most serious injury, he says it was an issue later in his career at the Titans that was more difficult for him to rebound from mentally.
"I broke my C6, [it almost] hit my spinal cord, but that was sweet [because] I was so mentally tough, I was back in the gym doing weights at six weeks," Peats remembers.
"It's weird, but the worst one was probably my right shoulder at the Titans.
"I dislocated my right shoulder in the trials against the Warriors, missed eight weeks, came back [and] played with that Johnathan Thurston seat belt all year. I played Origin, then dislocated it again.
"That's when Garth Brennan signed [as coach] and bought Mitch Rein with him, and then I lost heaps of confidence, I've just played Origin, why is a new coach bringing in another class hooker into the club?
"And then I just lost heaps of confidence in myself, it's not where I wanted to be."
For a player who used to be a hard-hitter, Peats now was struggling to live up to his previous exploits.
"It took so long, I was just anti-contact," Peats said, "I just wasn't myself. It took so long to come back.
"That's probably the one [injury] that took me the longest [to recover from]. My confidence got knocked, then I wasn't playing well."