Interesting week. Billy Vunipola said he’d be ok with being paid less money to play fewer games, a stance that will have pleased the IRFU’s David Nucifora who reckoned he owed big Billy a cheque in the mail.

So, on this week’s podcast Ronan O’Gara and Stephen Ferris discussed player welfare in modern rugby: is the IRFU’s player welfare system really a weapon when it comes to competing against the big chequebooks from the Premiership and Top 14? And has French rugby actually got a player welfare system?

I interviewed Rob Penney, formerly of Munster and now head coach with Japan’s NTT Shining Arcs. Via a  chat about the wonders of Japanese toilet technology I asked him about the circumstances that saw his Munster stint end after two years, and whether the players, fans, and media really got what he was trying to achieve on the field.

We have a Pat McCarry interview with Leinster and Ireland’s Rob Kearney, Hayley O’Connor helps us with our weekly head to head, and ROG answers some listener questions… including… when you’ve been cited or sent off, what tactics can you use to get that ban reduced?

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

And finally, we said goodbye to our series producer @ImJoeHarrington.

Good luck fella.

👍 pic.twitter.com/oa52bG5iGE

— Andy McGeady (@andymcgeady) September 28, 2017