It defiantly hits home the nature of certain sports seeing Andrew Conway having to call time on his career due to a persistent knee injury. He got back a month ago to play with Munster one final time in the win over the Sharks in Thomond Park.
Last week, another top notch operator had to admit defeat in his quest to get back to full fitness. Andrew Conway played his rugby with Blackrock College, Leinster and Munster in the pro game playing with Leinster 42 times and then moving to Munster in summer 2013 and going on to play in red 150 times and scoring 50 tries . He turned out for Ireland 30 times and scored 15 tries, a serious strike rate for club and country.
The try that will most likely stand out for most will be the effort against Toulon in 2018 in the Champions Cup quarter final when in the final 5 minutes when Munster were 5 points down and he collected a Francois Trinh Duc clearance on the touch line and cut in to race clear and score a try that will be long remembered by all in Thomond that afternoon.
He as I say had a terrific strike rate, 50 tries in 150 for Munster, 16 in 42 for Leinster and 15 in 30 caps for Ireland. He was an extremely cleaver rugby player who was well able to tackle as well as ind a gap when his team needed it.
Adept in the full back roll as well as playing on either wing, his durability and experience will be sorely missed by all who played alongside him. It is getting tough to write these pieces as I am in and around the same age and older than some of these guys, Johnny Holland had to do something similar in 2016, Felix Jones, CJ Stander.
Felix Jones has gone on to have great success as a coach with Munster were he cut his teeth as a coach and most recently with South Africa where he has just won his second World Cup winners medal. He will now take a place in the England coaching team alongside Steve Borthwick.
Back to Andrew Conway, it will be interesting to see what he may do next in his life, I am sure he will take a break before making his next move. Will he go into coaching or will he be more than happy to make a clean break away from rugby…
Whatever may be in the pipeline for Andrew, I’d like to wish him well and thank him for the last number of years in red… I for one won’t forget your try vs Toulon…