HOLMES KEEPS NRL AS OPTION
THE door remains ajar for rugby league superstar Valentine Holmes to join the North Queensland Cowboys next season.
Holmes would consider a return to the NRL next year if he can’t fulfil his American football ambitions with the New York Jets in the next few weeks.
The Townsville product was linked with the Cowboys this year before earning a shot at the NFL.
While he says his number one aim remains to make the final team cut of 53 players with the Jets in pre-season matches starting this week, rugby league remains close to his heart.
Asked by News Corp Australia whether a return to the NRL was still a possibility for 2020, he replied: “Yeah. Well, that’s what I know best. I’ve been playing rugby league since I was a kid.
“This (making the Jets’ final squad) is definitely what I’m here to do and trying to make but if all things go downhill and not for me, I guess I could always go back,” he said.
“It (rugby league) is something I love playing and something I could easily move back into, I guess.
“If I don’t make it, I don’t know what really happens. I don’t know how it all works out, it’s my first time so if I get cut, you either get picked up (by another NFL team) or you’re done.
“But I’m not worrying about it, I’m just trying to be where my feet are at and take each day and still enjoy it while I’m here because everyone knows it is a very cutthroat business here.
“A lot could happen tomorrow so I’m just trying to enjoy myself, you don’t know what could happen next year, you don’t know what could happen in a couple of weeks’ time.”
Holmes is a $1 millionplus player in the NRL. But if he misses the cut at the Jets and stays in the US on their practice squad, he’ll be paid about $190,000.
While he has been linked to the Cowboys, Holmes says his former team Cronulla Sharks remained an option for him.
“It’s good to get all that support from my mates, especially from the Sharks, a lot of the boys always ask how I’m going,” he said.
Holmes is in the middle of a gruelling 14-hour-a-day training camp with 89 fellow aspirants at the Jets’ incredible $100 million Atlantic Health training centre in New Jersey which features three outdoor training fields plus a fullsize indoor field.
Holmes has impressed everyone at the Jets with his attitude, including head coach Adam Gase, who said Holmes was showing glimpses of form after starting camp with a sore back.
“He made a nice play today. He looks to me like he’s feeling better, you know. Starting off with a back problem kinda slowed him up at the beginning of camp,” Gase said during yesterday’s session ahead of their first official practice game against New York rivals, the Giants, today.
“He’s picking up the offence, that hasn’t really been his issue. When everything starts moving super fast, he’s trying to get used to that, and I think it’s starting to work for him.”