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What... the... f*ck...

http://www.news.com.au/sport/nrl/origin ... c97c966049

Cameron Smith to announce his retirement from representative rugby league

AUSTRALIAN and Queensland captain Cameron Smith is set to announce a shock retirement from representative rugby league.

AUSTRALIAN and Queensland captain Cameron Smith will announce his retirement from representative rugby league, effective immediately.

Fox Sports reports that the No. 9 has called a press conference for 1pm in Melbourne where he will make the announcement.

Smith has won 11 of the past 12 State of Origin series with Queensland, as well as two World Cups with the Kangaroos.

For Melbourne Storm, he has won two premierships.

That is a shock... Out of absolutely nowhere.

And effective immediately? What is going on?

Televised on Fox Sports News at 1PM

Such a shame... Obviously a knee jerk reaction to the bad press this week. I hope he doesn't come to regret this decision.

I can't believe how sad this makes me... I guess it's a glimpse into what it will be like when he hangs up the boots for good.

Agreed. Very, very sad. Part of me thought he would still be playing rep footy for another couple of years. Most disappointing is we don't get a chance to farewell him properly on the rep stage.

I’m shocked. Devastated for Queensland, but could be good for the Storm

$$$ odds on a Blues Series win just plummeted dramatically.

His commitment to the Melbourne Storm organisation couldn't have been clearer in his statements. He felt like he wasn't able to give the club his full efforts in backing up from Origin and he didn't feel that was fair. True definition of a great leader.

Massive surprise out of nowhere but from a purely selfish perspective I'm rapt to hear the news. I'm not a Queenslander so I'm not upset he'll be missing Origin, I'm a Melbourne Storm fan/member first and foremost and if Cams decision is going to help us then I'm all for it.

What has happened to make him say this.

Surely not planned.

If planned he would have retired the way Cronk did.

Think everything has started to take a toll on him and he wanted to be 100% committed to the Storm and didn't think he could handle both. Timing is odd but this doesn't feel like a rash decision to me.

My initial worry was he might be then thinking of retiring from everything at end of 2018
But after listening to his press conference im confident this is now just to allow him to give back more to storm which is a good thing

Also, just looking at the way the schedule is now, as long as he stays healthy, thats an additional 4 games we will have him for that he wouldnt of played, as from the way he was talking about last year, he wouldnt of been able to back up for the storm games after Origin, so this could be a great thing for our 2018 hopes.

So he just took his time to make his decision.