"All over" - Three Exeter Chiefs legends announce retirement

This news comes amidst a flurry of reports in recent weeks about their star athletes departing for foreign clubs.

Along with the retirements, the team will also witness the departure of several other players at the end of the season, including Sam Simmonds, Joe Simmonds, Harry Williams, Jannes Kirsten, and Dave Ewers, with Jack Nowell anticipated to follow suit.

After spending 11 years at Sandy Park, the twice-capped Ireland back, who is 35 years old, has announced his retirement from professional rugby this summer.

During his time at Exeter, he was part of the squad for four out of the team's six Premiership finals and played as a starter in their 2020 Champions Cup final victory against Racing 92 in Bristol.

"It's a sad thing admitting to yourself that you can't play professional rugby forever," he told BBC Radio Devon.

"I have enjoyed it, it's been a great club to play for, it's a party that you don't ever want to end.

"But at the same time you can only keep up for so long and you don't want to hang on and hang on until the bitter end until everybody's laughing at you because you're so old.

"It was difficult, but it feels like I've made the right decision.

"The club's heading towards a new era, they're going to be building a new team, and at my age I was never going to be part of a new team.

"Body-wise, recovering after a game and being able to train during the week, from that regard as well it feels like it's the right time."

The long-serving prop is now the sole original left in the current Exeter Chiefs squad that remains from the club's days in the RFU Championship.

Moon made his first team debut for the Devon club back in October 2008 in a home fixture against Sedgley Park - and has since gone on to forge himself as a mainstay within the Chiefs ranks, both in the Premiership and in European competition.

An unsung hero who goes quietly about his business out on the pitch, Moon - who represented England at age group level - is not only a destructive scrummager, but a workmanlike forward who is more than happy to do the hard yards in the heat of battle.

Moon has recently finished celebrating his Testimonial year, another rich reward for the Tiverton-born forward who has now amassed over 300 senior appearances for the Chiefs.

A corner of the Chiefs pack throughout their time in the Premiership and Europe, Moon's on-field displays were rewarded in September 2018 when he was initially called into Eddie Jones' England training squad for the first time. He then went on to make his full Test debut against South Africa in the opening Autumn International at Twickenham in November 2018.

Honours for Moon during his Chiefs career include two Premiership Rugby titles, a European Champions Cup crown, plus an LV= Cup winners' medal in 2014.

Hogg, the 30-year-old Scotland full-back, has disclosed the moment in 2021 when he contemplated retiring from playing rugby.

His announcement last month that he intends to quit playing after the upcoming World Cup in France came as a surprise to the rugby community.

Hogg, who has been selected three times for the British and Irish Lions, cited his deteriorating physical condition as the reason for his decision to retire.

“I had been thinking of it for a while. You look at the disappointment of the 2017 Lions tour, picking up all the injuries and then starting to get all the hate (online abuse)," he explained on the latest RugbyPass Offload.

“It took me a while to get over the disappointment of that tour, so for the for the couple of years ahead of the 2021 Lions tour I said, ‘Right, this is my time. I’m going to go all out to make sure I get on this tour’.

“I was chuffed to bits, over the moon to be in a position to go on a third tour. I didn’t see myself as a proper Lion until I get a Test match and if I didn’t get a Test match, to this day I still wouldn’t believe I am a proper Lion.

“So I targeted that from an individual point of view, that I am going to do everything I possibly can to get there. And I loved it, I absolutely loved it, but the only thing looking back is we played a Lions tour in South Africa with nobody in the stands.

“Since then, I have really, really struggled with my body. I had done everything to get there. I have got patellar tendinitis in both knees, worse in the right than in the left.

“I remember speaking to older boys who said you get to a certain point in your career – and it just hits you. Bang. It just hits you. I was like, ‘It will never happen to me. Never happen to me’. In 2021 after the Six Nations, that time came. It just hit me like a ton of bricks.

“I was like, ‘Holy shit, what has happened here?’ It was just game on game I was trying to do everything I possibly could to build up to play. Went on the Lions tour, had an extended time off, didn’t do any pre-season training or anything like that, I wanted to mentally switch off and recharge. Came back in, did a couple of weeks of training, straight back into playing – and I played a lot of rugby that season – and then the body just started to break down.

“I worked closely with Steve Haw, our physio at the club, and he has been absolutely outstanding. I was spending hours on the physio bed every day to get right and I have just got to the point where having a young family, it breaks my heart when my son comes up to me and says, ‘Dad, do you want to go and play football in the garden after training?’

“But I’m absolutely knackered, I’m in too much pain that I can’t go outside. I’m like, ‘Enough is enough, family is my priority and rugby has started to become a job’."