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Wales international forced to retire with immediate effect
By Tom Webber
Wales and Ospreys prop Paul James has been forced to retire due to a shoulder problem.
James has not featured competitively since coming on as a replacement in the Ospreys' Pro14 victory over the Dragons on December 31, 2017.
The 36-year-old, capped 66 times by Wales, revealed a lack of improvement in his shoulder after two operations has forced him to switch his focus to coaching.
"I'm sad to say my time has come to an end. After two shoulder operations and a lot of rehab I'm afraid that my shoulder hasn't recovered," James wrote in a post on Twitter.
"I would just like to thank everyone who has supported me over my career and has helped me achieve everything I did, especially my wife Louise as she had to go through the highs and lows with me.
"I look back with no regrets and loved every second of it. I will miss the banter with the boys but hope to get a new buzz out of dipping my toes into coaching."
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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