Dan Biggar: Retiring fly-half great targets family time over full coaching role

Biggar admits that the decision to retire is one that has been on his mind for some time.

“I didn’t just wake up one morning and think ‘you know what, today is the day (to retire)’,” he said.

“I think after the (2023) World Cup, I think my whole career had been based on playing to the highest level, whether that was Wales, the Lions, World Cups etc.

“When I finished with Wales 18 months ago after the World Cup it was kind of like at the minute you were just going from week to week and you realise how nice it is being at home a bit more.

“And things haven’t quite gone as well as I would have liked this year in terms of playing-wise in Toulon, I’m coming towards the end, and I just thought well why not get out ahead of it a little bit and make the decision myself.

“It just felt like the time was right from a family perspective, from a playing perspective and from what I’ve got going on off the field it just felt like the right time, and time to give back a little bit, a bit of time back to my family as well.

“The thing I’m most proud of in my career – because it is a job at the end of the day, people sometimes forget it’s a job – is being able to give my kids and my wife, I suppose, a great opportunity in life.

“That was probably something that when I was younger I could never have dreamed of for them, so that was a big influence in it and you don’t realise how much it affects your kids, your wife and people closest to you.

“Because they’re the ones who have to pick the pieces up when things are difficult, when you don’t want to go out for dinner, out of your front door – you come home in a bad mood or you’re injured or whatever it is.

“They have to miss out on so much and for me I just thought this is the time now when we’re young, we’re healthy, we’re able to do loads of things, give the kids opportunities, and it just felt like it was right to give some of my time back to them, because they’ve given everything of theirs to me over the last six or seven years that we’ve had kids and my wife for the previous 18.”