For those of you searching for conspiracies theories to explain his sudden announcement, we're sorry, but there doesn't appear to be any.

Apparently Hickie's relationship with Michael Cheika at Leinster is excellent and we're told he genuinely enjoyed the Australian's regime at the province. There appears to be no issues from an Irish point of view either and you can only conclude that he was either fed up with the often monotonous routine a professional rugby player has to go through, or his body was screaming at him . . .

his dodgy back in particular . . . to put a halt to things before he ended up with some serious physical problems.

Retired professionals have told tales over the past few years of literally crawling out of bed in the mornings and gradually stretching themselves out on the floor so that they can stand up properly and start their day. Perhaps Hickie didn't want to go through that kind of routine for the rest of his life.

Whatever the reason for his upcoming retirement, and we can only speculate as to why until the player himself reveals all after the World Cup, it's going to be interesting to watch what he gets up to next. Hickie is one of the first Irish players to retire having been a professional rugby player all his working life and unlike his amateur counterparts in the past, the winger has nothing to fall back on. It's something an awful lot of players are going to have to face up to in the coming years and while you don't worry about an intelligent, articulate and high-profile guy like Hickie, not everybody will be so blessed when they retire.

That's exactly why Irish rugby is set to get a Players' Services Advisor, or a title something along those lines, in the coming months. The role will involve pointing players in the right direction when planning their career beyond rugby, be that helping arrange work placements in various businesses or advising players as to what educational courses might be worth taking while they are earning a living on the pitch. The role has already been in place in Wales, Australia and England over the past few years and while Irish rugby has lagged behind a little, there now appears to be a recognition from the IRFU that they have a duty of care to the players after they finish their careers.

They can't just use them and dump them.

"We're a little behind on this issue, " admits IRUPA chief executive Niall Woods, "but the role will be in place before the end of the year and I think it's going to help a lot of players. It might take a while for the whole thing to really take off but if five or six players in a province work with the advisor and they get something positive out of it, word of mouth will spread and more players will use the service."

In Wales, they've employed an advisor of this sort since 1995, while in the Guinness Premiership four full-time advisors are now employed to work with the league's 12 clubs. "There have been great benefits in the countries that have been doing this for years, " says Woods. "In Australia, for example, a study a couple of years back found that players who started to go down the path of a new career while still playing rugby actually upped their performance level on the pitch by 25 per cent because their minds had something else to focus on."

It's the kind of logic that Felipe Contepomi, for example, has always applied to mixing his medical career with his rugby one but it's not only athletes of the oval ball game that will be looked after in Ireland in the coming years.

Earlier this year, the Irish Institute of Sport appointed Phil Moore as its first Director of Athlete Services, a role that will deliver lifestyle support services . . . education and career development in addition to managing family life . . .to elite Irish athletes. Whoever does end up filling the rugby role can depend on Moore for support and resources, making this extremely important initiative far more likely to succeed.

This, of course, is too late for Hickie (although we're sure he'll do just fine) and a handful of other professional players likely to retire in the next two or three years, but at least the rest of Ireland's professional rugby players will have someone to guide and advise them as they consider life after their own retirements.