Eliesa Katoa has made one thing crystal clear: he wants to play rugby league again, and he's not interested in pointing fingers at the people who were supposed to keep him safe.
The two-time Dally M backrower of the year is fortunate to be drawing breath after absorbing three devastating head knocks while turning out for Tonga at last November's Pacific Championships, leaving him with a brain bleed and no choice but to have emergency surgery.
The 26-year-old is sidelined for the entirety of the 2026 season.
He is quietly grinding through his rehabilitation, lacing up boots alongside Melbourne Storm teammates each day, albeit with the collision work firmly off limits.
Speaking to Channel 7's Agenda Setters on Monday night, Katoa painted a picture of a man laser-focused on the singular mission of getting back on a football field.
"There's a few appointments to go through," he said.
"But at the moment, I'm just taking it week by week and just listening to all the coaches, what they need me to do, whether it's run another 1.2km (run) every week, I'm just doing whatever the team needs me to do at the moment.
"I don't want to go back and take my time talking about what happened.
"I think everyone knows, I was lucky enough to play for Tonga, and we were playing the Kiwis.
"I got three head knocks, so I had blood on my brain. I went to the hospital, had a few surgeries on it, and I'm still recovering from that."
The sequence of events that brought Katoa to this point is harrowing.
During warm-ups before Tonga's Test against New Zealand at Eden Park, he copped a heavy head clash that never made it back to the coaching box.
He then absorbed two more blows to the skull mid-match before seizing on the sideline and being rushed to an Auckland hospital for emergency brain surgery.
The fallout reverberated across the sport, forcing an uncomfortable reckoning over how head knocks are managed, not only by those directly involved that day, but by rugby league as a whole.
Panthers premiership winner Martin Lang dismissed the breach notices handed to four Tonga staff members, including proposed two-year bans for the head doctor, assistant doctor and head trainer, as nothing more than a "Band-Aid solution."
Yet despite being the man at the centre of it, Katoa has no appetite for blame.
"I'm the sort of person that what happened, I sort of leave that and move away and move forward and do what I need to do," he explained.
"Obviously, my goal is just to come back and play, and there's no point for me to look back and try to see what should have happened and what we could have done better.
"It's already happened, and lucky enough, I'm still alive.
"My next goal is focusing on what I can do to come back and play the game again."
Melbourne announced last November that Katoa would miss the full 2026 campaign, with the club committing to walk alongside him through each medically supervised step.
The backrower showed his gratitude for the environment that's around him, particularly head coach Craig Bellamy.
"I'm going really well at the moment," Katoa said.
"There's a lot of support around me, obviously with Melbourne and the medical staff and obviously the boys and the coaching staff as well, which has been so good for me, and I'm really grateful about that.
"I've been going well with my recovery. There's still a long head to go, but like I said, my goal is to do whatever I can do to come back and play the game again.
"The support that he (Storm coach Craig Bellamy) has done for me, I can't thank enough. Like I said, not only just him, but from the club and everyone around here in Melbourne here, it's been huge and I'm so grateful for that."
Katoa knows that ultimately, it won't be his willpower that decides his fate; it'll be the verdict of the neurosurgeons.
The reality sits heavily with him, though he carries it with remarkable composure.
"Yeah, look, it's going to be tough," Katoa said.
"There's a lot of things going into it. If you talk about yes or no answers here, I'm thinking about my family as well – the people that I do what I do for them.
"But for what I'm doing now, it's just controlling of what I can do, whether it's getting flogged at training all the time and doing the blue shirt and helping out the boys.
"I know if I just do my bit, the thing that I can control, and hopefully that can go a long way.
"But in terms of that, we don't know the answers yet, but let's just hope for the best."
Katoa's bond with Tonga runs deep. With a rugby league World Cup on the horizon, Katoa welcomes any role his country has for him, no matter how small.
"If they want me there, obviously I love that jersey there," Katoa said.
"And they're the reason why I sort of, you know, I play the game."
Katoa also revealed another important reason why he would want a chance to help his country's team.
"And it's for my family. And I grew up in Tonga my whole life. And whatever part, if they want me to be outside and help out with whatever, I'd love to."
