British tennis icon Sir Andy Murray has announced that he intends to retire after this year's Wimbledon tournament due to his prolonged injury nightmare, but his farewell could come even as early as after the Australian Open, which begins next week.

Two-time Wimbledon winner and former world number one Murray, 31, has been plagued with injuries over the last two years, and it will be a sad way to see him go after achieving so much in the sport.

As well as winning Wimbledon in 2013 – becoming the first British man to do so in 76 years – and 2016, Murray is also a double Olympic champion, winning the singles events in 2016 and 2016, a Davis Cup winner in 2015 and a former world number one.

He was also a silver medallist in the mixed doubles in the London 2012 games, a Tour Finals winner in 2016, a three-time winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, a 39-time winner of ATP Masters/Tour events, a six-time losing Grand Slam finalist, an Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year, a Doctor of the University of Stirling and a Knight of the Realm.

Put simply, he is a British sporting legend.

Not only has he achieved all of this – which is quite the CV in itself – he has done so in perhaps the most competitive era the sport has ever seen.

He has regularly battled fellow greats of the game in Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal across his 14-year professional career, and while his very impressive trophy cabinet doesn't quite stack up to the likes of Federer's 20 Grand Slam titles or Rafa's 11 French Open victories, the fact that he has won multiple titles and been ranked world number one in a time that all four players were active shows how good he was.

British tennis was in a fairly poor state before he came along, and the fear many tennis fans will have had since Murray reached the top was 'what will happen after he leaves?'

That question will now have to be answered. Kyle Edmund has been the British number one in Murray's absence and reached the Australian Open semi-finals last year as he climbed to his current ranking of 14 in the world. Whether he can maintain that level and come close to reaching the heights of Murray's success remains to be seen.

What we do know is that a lot more people have been playing, watching, debating and complaining about tennis in the UK in recent years with the sport having become more popular than it ever has been, and that is down to one man.

All the best in your retirement, Sir Andy.

Does Carabao Cup rule need scrapping?

Manchester City's 9-0 demolition of Burton Albion on Wednesday showed how much of a farce the two legs rule in the Carabao/EFL/League Cup semi-finals can be.

In most other competitions, City would now be in the final and Burton will be licking their wounds and reflecting on an otherwise superb cup run.

But instead, poor Albion will have to pick themselves up for another 90 minutes of torture against the Premier League champions in the second leg a week on Tuesday.

I can't imagine viewing figures will be high for what is possibly the most pointless competitive match of all time (closely rivalled by the third place play-off of any non-Olympic event).

Is it time to change to a single-leg semi-final, especially when the too-many-matches debate is wheeled out on a regular basis?

Premiership relegation debate is a non-starter

Monday morning was a more uncomfortable start to the week than usual for Championship rugby fans, who woke up to the news that Premiership Rugby chief Ian Ritchie said it is "right and proper" to look into scrapping relegation from the Premiership to the Championship.

This cannot be allowed to happen. Every level of every sport needs to have the competitive element of promotion of relegation in some form, otherwise what's the point?

No-one wants to see their team finish bottom of the league every season with no consequence, and while the thought of your team winning the league every year sounds fun at first, it will soon get boring when you are thrashing the same teams week-in, week-out.

It's a no from me.