FROM football to rugby, golf and then horseracing, it has been an incredible sporting merry-go-round for Jay Tabb over the last decade.

The former midfielder, who celebrated his 40th birthday last month, spent six years at Brentford from 2000 to 2006 before switching to Coventry, where he was voted fans’ Player of the Year in 2007-08.

He then went on to help Reading to the Championship title in 2011-12, a promotion that earned him 12 Premier League appearances before playing the final three years of his career at Ipswich in the second tier.

He quit aged 32 in 2016 — and his ambitions have been unlike any other footballer after hanging up his boots.

He has worked as a builder, played amateur rugby union, reduced his golf handicap down to five and caddied on the Ladies’ European Tour.

He also qualified from horseracing’s Northern Racing College in Doncaster and went on to ride the Philip Hobbs-trained Umndeni to sixth place at Wincanton in the Fitzdares Racing Welfare Charity flat race in 2021.

What Jay says about it all

Tabb said: “In the last couple of years of my football career at Ipswich, working under manager Mick McCarthy and his assistant Terry Connor was brilliant. I cannot speak highly enough about them.

“But I knew that my playing days were coming to an end.

“I had lost my appetite for the game. I know this sounds weird but I have really missed football — but I have not missed playing since the day I quit.

“I was in a bubble. I loved the atmosphere of being involved but I lost my mojo for playing.

“Football has been incredibly kind to me and I will be forever grateful for the path it’s allowed me to take in my professional life.

“But I had new challenges once I stopped — and when the opportunity came along to play rugby or golf, and train and ride horses, it has been a pretty amazing journey.”