Going, Going, gone ... ex-HK star Vaughan calls it a day

After 10 years plying his trade in the English Premiership and French First Division, former Hong Kong fullback Vaughan Going is back in town on his way home to New Zealand where a new life awaits him - one without rugby boots.

'This is it. I have been flat-out playing rugby 11 months a year for the past 10 years. It has been wonderful. I had a great time playing at the top level in Britain and France, but enough is enough,' said Going, who arrived in Hong Kong earlier this week accompanied by wife Amanda and three children - Giselle, five, Luca, two, and Leo, seven months.

At 36, he was the oldest player in the English Premiership last season where he turned out for Northampton Saints. It was to be his final chapter in a long career. Going, who played for Hong Kong during the heady Pac Rim years when the former British colony played in an IRB-sanctioned tournament against Japan, Canada and the United States, now intends to get into real estate development.

'I left Hong Kong in 1998 once the International Rugby Board brought in the three-year eligibility rule. I knew then that this ruling would make it difficult for players to turn up in Hong Kong and play,' recounts Going. 'I also realised when the game went professional in 1997 that the time had come to move on.'

The Hong Kong Rugby Football Union, which pulled out of Pac Rim participation in that handover year, had also decided that it would no longer support local First Division clubs by essentially helping smooth the way with the Immigration Department and getting work visas for the players. Going was quick to see the writing on the wall and realise it was the end of Hong Kong's flirtation with top-level international rugby.

Confident of his skills as a free-running fullback, Going decided to leave Hong Kong for Britain in pursuit of a career at the highest club level. He was the forerunner of rugby's opportunists from the southern hemisphere who took their skills and boots, and went in pursuit of adventure and money.

'My first club in the English Premiership was Harlequins. I played a season before moving to London Welsh. After one season, I moved to Sale Sharks where I stayed for four years. I then left and went to France and turned out for Beziers before returning to England to play for Bristol and then finally Northampton,' said Going, ticking off the past decade.