You know, you'll have conversations about race and about environment issues shut down, yet every year we have military rounds and, you know, politicians attending sports games and prime ministers making speeches and those sorts of things.

Welcome to the Edge of Sports podcast.

I'm Dave Ziron.

This week we talked to famed Australian rugby union player David Pocock, who is a very influential activist athlete in his world, and he is announcing his retirement.

Also, I have choice words about military flyovers. Just stand up and just sit down awards and more, but first, David Pocock.

So, first and foremost, David Pocock, I got to ask you,

32 years old, why retire now?

Yeah, it hasn't really been one particular thing. Yeah, I guess every athlete has to weigh up the

physical costs playing a contact sport. And that's certainly something to consider. I've heard

Rob Bell, who's American former preacher and author and podcasters say you can leave when

it feels like a graduation or you can hang in there and leave when it feels like a divorce.

And it just feels like the right time for me.

I've had some amazing opportunities playing rugby here in Australia and representing Australia on a

world stage at Rugby World Cups. You know, that was a childhood dream for me. And I feel like

it's time to, yeah, move on and contribute in other areas. Yeah, so what's your focus now going to

be now that you're walking away from rugby?

The two things that really interest me, regenerative agriculture and how that fits into

conservation. So I've been working on a project in Zimbabwe trying to create a new wildlife area whilst working with local communities on

livestock management grazing livestock in a way that's going to regenerate land which

has sort of been I don't know really degraded over over the last couple of decades so

been putting a bit of work into that

on the side and I guess now, yeah, get a chance to dive in and see where it leads. Now this is so

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