Former Australia flyhalf Bernard Foley, who earned the nickname ‘Iceman’ for nailing crucial kicks, will retire from professional \u200brugby at the end of the Japanese season, \u200chis team Kubota Spears said.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old earned the last of his 76 caps for Australia in 2022 before heading to Japan, where he \u200bhelped the Spears to the League One title \u200bin 2023.<\/p>\n
Once a rugby sevens specialist who won a \u2060Commonwealth Games silver medal at Delhi 2010, Foley booted \u200ba 79th minute penalty from 45 metres to seal the \u200bNew South Wales Waratahs’ first Super Rugby title in 2014 with a 33-32 win over the Canterbury Crusaders in the final.<\/p>\n
He attained national \u200bhero status the following year as Michael Cheika’s Wallabies \u200breached the 2015 World Cup final in England, producing a 28-point game \u200cto \u2060knock out the hosts from the pool phase before booting an 80th minute penalty to eliminate Scotland 35-34 in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Foley was also a member of Cheika’s squad for the \u200bill-fated 2019 \u200bWorld Cup in \u2060Japan, where the Wallabies were knocked out in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Although he left Australian rugby for \u200bJapan after that World Cup, Foley earned \u200ba Wallabies \u2060recall under Dave Rennie in 2022 and was never far from the selection conversation in recent years whenever injuries struck \u2060Australia’s \u200bflyhalf stocks.<\/p>\n
Kubota confirmed Foley’s retirement along \u200bwith two other Spears players Japan test flanker Lappies Labuschagne and lock David \u200bBulbring.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23623,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-32756","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Kubota confirmed Foley's retirement along \u200bwith two other Spears players.","published_date":"","news_description":"Kubota confirmed Foley's retirement along \u200bwith two other Spears players.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32759,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32756\/revisions\/32759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=32756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}