Born in Ascot, but raised in Australia from the age of 16, Ball arrived in Llanelli in 2012 from Super Rugby side Western Force.<\/p>\n
In a nine-year stint, Ball was part of the Scarlets squad that won the Pro12 league title in 2017 and reached the European Champions Cup semi-final the following year.<\/p>\n
Ball left Scarlets in 2021 to return to Australia and had a playing spell in Japan before returning to Wales.<\/p>\n
“The Scarlets supporters here are an awesome bunch, their passion for the team is incredible and they have been amazing to me and my family,” said Ball.<\/p>\n
“There have been some incredible highs, the lead-up to winning the championship in 2017 and Europe the following year.<\/p>\n
“That was a special time with a special group of players. I will always remember the friendships, the people who have made my time here so memorable.”<\/p>\n
Ball, who qualified for Wales through his father who is from Colwyn Bay, made his Wales debut in 2014.<\/p>\n
He was part of the Grand Slam-winning side in 2019 and a World Cup semi-finalist that same year.<\/p>\n
The no-nonsense lock formed an international partnership with Alun Wyn Jones, although the pair were infamously involved in a training ground scuffle<\/a> during the 2021 Six Nations campaign.<\/p>\n Ball played his final Test in the victory against Italy<\/a> in Rome in March 2021 with Wales going onto to win the Six Nations title that season.<\/p>\n He is the latest Grand Slam-winning Wales international to announce their retirements following former Scarlets trio Liam Williams<\/a>, George North<\/a> and Leigh Halfpenny.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Born in Ascot, but raised in Australia from the age of 16, Ball arrived in Llanelli in 2012…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-439765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}