Four years ago at the last Rugby World Cup, Jonathan Thomas was part of the Wales squad for the tournament.
However the 32-year-old, who also played in the 2003 tournament and won 67 Welsh caps, has had to retire from rugby after being diagnosed with epilepsy caused by "multiple head traumas".
Tonight on Off The Ball, he spoke to Ger about his condition, the cause and how it has impacted his life.
"I got diagnosed with epilepsy back in October. That was following six weeks of having mild seizures. At the time, obviously, because I wasn't fully aware on the subject of epilepsy, I didn't really know what was going on or what was happening. I was also getting some short-term memory loss also. I mentioned it to the club doctor and he sent me for various tests and I was diagnosed with epilepsy, albeit of a mild form," he said.
He was told that he could play on as long as he took medication and the condition was managed but he was only able to continue until the end of the season with his club Worcester.
"Although it's one thing being able to live a normal life as a human being, it's another thing being a professional athlete where you have to perform at high intensity and unfortunately what happened over the course of time was I just realised that my capacity to work hard had reduced. I was getting a few other various side effects like sleep issues, again the short term memory loss and over the time, it just ground me down and my consultant basically said to me that we've explored every strategy to keep playing and it comes a time to pull the plug on the career," said Thomas.
He also spoke about the cause and says that epilepsy developed in adulthood is often caused by multiple head trauma.
"I've only had two or three serious concussions over the years," he said, " But the interesting thing that I learned off the consultant was the major knockouts that a lot of the media talk about or supporters get shocked at watching on TV, they're sometimes not the ones that do the serious damage, believe it or not," he said, explaining that the less high-profile head traumas receive less recovery time than major knockouts.
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