Worse players have won caps and, most probably, worse players will. Alas at just 24 the gifted Leinster and Blackrock centre Brian Carey has been forced to retire with an arthritic knee condition, denying the rest of us from now on the sight of those white boots dancing through despairing tackles.

On his day, Carey was a thrilling runner with the ball in hand. He could accelerate either left or right through a gap, seemingly off his heels, like few of his contemporaries. As the first Donnybrook night of the season looms, and recalling the scything breaks which often died for lack of support against, say, Begles/Bordeaux last season, it's hard not to think of how Carey would have flourished in this season's remodelled Leinster back-line, with Barry Everitt's distribution on his inside, and the likes of Brian O'Driscoll, Girvan Dempsey and Denis Hickie on his outside.

A Blackrock partnership of Carey and O'Driscoll would have been something worth salivating over down Stradbrook way too. "It's a real shame," says the Blackrock coach Kevin West. "He had established some confidence again last year and was looking forward to making a real go of it this season. There's not a lot of Irish players who have his acceleration off the mark. In any of our good performances he was a real impetus for us. It's a real shame."

All of which is a strong reminder of how ruthless a profession rugby now is. In June, Carey was training with Leinster and had been offered another full-time contract with the province, but within three weeks had been advised to retire by his surgeon. And with that his career and his contract ended. Just like that.

"I knew there was a problem with the knee but I didn't know exactly what, and the physios thought the same," says Carey. "So I went to my normal surgeon and he said the best and quickest resolution would be a scope. Two weeks later he sat me down and told me that if I went on playing it would affect my quality of life later on, and he advised me to pack it in."

Phlegmatically, Carey has taken the news on the chin. "I'd been preparing myself for this for a few years, because I've had a dodgy knee for three years; I just thought I might be able to hang in there until I was 28 or 29. But it wasn't really worth carrying on.

"It probably wasn't going to get any better and given the knee problem, I'd taken my career as far as it could go at this stage. I knew it wasn't going to get any better, only worse, and my gut feeling was to pack it in. I could have given up three years ago, as a lot of other people might have done, so all told it could have been a lot worse."

Carey was a natural, who played in every position in the back-line in his brief career. From Tipperary originally, he boarded at Blackrock College for five years, playing for a season at out-half with the juniors, then for a couple of years at scrum-half for the seniors. He won a sports scholarship at UCD, and it was through the Irish under-21 coach Eddie O'Sullivan that he relocated his representative rugby career to Connacht under the coaching of George Hook.

Carey flourished at Connacht, the highlight probably being his third year there when coach Warren Gatland used him as a penetrating roving strike runner from full back. He picks out a try from the deep against Ulster at Ravenhill that year as his personal favourite.

That season he went on to play for Ireland A against France at Donnybrook, although ominously injured his shoulder. "That was the beginning of the shoulder problems," and contributed to a less than impressive A performance against Scotland at Watsonians, although the win stands out as the highlight of his career.

"I wasn't really right, but I was young and eager and I wanted to make my mark. In hindsight it mightn't have been the best of ideas but if I hadn't played I probably would be regretting it more now."

Having moved to Blackrock, he switched to Leinster in the final year of his studies but a shoulder operation sidelined him for practically the whole of the 1997-98 season. He came back last season to win a Leinster full-time contract, and played his best rugby. After eventually regaining his place from Martin Ridge, Carey pushed his name back into the Irish A frame with three successive Leinster appearances before turning on his knee after six minutes of the provincial decider against Munster. "No regrets," he says. "I never really got a free run for one whole season and, of course, I'll wonder what might have happened if I had, but I did well to get the honours I did considering my knee."

Carey is now looking into the legal ramifications of his enforced and premature retirement, and the question of insurance. He also says he's "lucky" in that he has his commerce degree to fall back on, and will now pursue a career in sales and marketing. "I'll get my curriculum vitae together now, and start networking and putting my name around agencies. I guess it's time to put on a tin of fruit."