The life of a professional sportsperson can come to a halt in various different ways. Only the very few have the luxury of a pre-announced retirement along with celebratory last seasonⁱ.

Some can own their decision to retire, both circumstance and timing, even if they weren’t 100% conscious at the time that their last game would be their last game.

Some have a rough plan with a post-rugby goal in mind for when they hang up the boots.

But for many it is sudden and unexpected.

In studio for the latest episode of #TheHardYards with @jamesdowney23 @mikemccarthy6 & @andymcgeady

We have Ronan O’Gara on the phone too pic.twitter.com/XvP8mChKDv

— Pat McCarry (@patmccarry) September 21, 2017

Mike McCarthy joined us in studio this week along with James Downey with Ronan O’Gara on the line. I asked Mike how he was getting on since his move from Leinster to Narbonne was scuppered by an unwilling elbow. James described how he approached what he thought might be his last few seasons before getting to a mid-thirties retirement date, and ROG brought us back to a surreal hour after a lost semi-final in France that would turn out to be the last game of his playing career.

Also:

• RIP Pat Geraghty: a important backroom player behind some great Munster teams.
• How hard is it to play, whether a home or away player, in front of a virtually empty stadium?
• Pat McCarry interviews Ulster’s young back, the newly-capped Jacob Stockdale
• Pat and I pick our Pro14 winners this week (against the spread)

And, of course, we could not finish without Mike’s naked adventures.

It’s a good one, this.

To subscribe to the podcast, here’s some useful links:

RSS: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:286355364/sounds.rss

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-hard-yards-sportsjoe/id1202196923?mt=2