Neville: Hawthorns game was decisive moment

04 February 2011 08:00
Gary Neville knew after Manchester United's New Year's Day win over West Brom that it would be his last game for the club he loves. Neville announced his retirement from the game with immediate effect on Wednesday night, bringing the curtain down on an exceptional career that brought him eight Premier League titles and 85 England caps. But after battling back from a succession of injuries in the latter part of his career, Neville realised that day at The Hawthorns that he simply could not cut it any more. "After that game on New Year's Day I felt I had reached the end," he said. "In fact, it wasn't after that game, it was during. I had been thinking about it for a month or so before that. "Sometimes you get a feeling in your mind that you just can't go again and that time had come for me. In the previous two seasons I had played 25-30 games and there was always a period where I felt I was contributing. "Once you have lost that, you don't want to be a passenger."

Source: PA