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Jonathan Rea says he is “at peace” that his decision to retire from World Superbike racing at the end of the season is “100% the correct one” after the stresses and struggles of the past few years made competing in the sport less enjoyable.

The six-time series champion has had time to reflect since announcing in August his decision to bring the curtain down on his distinguished career and is now preparing for his final race weekend in the championship at Jerez in Spain this weekend, 17 years after he made his bow.

Rea is the most successful rider in World Superbikes, collecting those titles as a Kawasaki rider in consecutive years between 2015 and 2020, securing 119 race wins and 264 podiums.

He was unable to add to those successes during a difficult past couple of years as part of the Pata Yamaha set-up.

“At the time it was a really hard decision to come to and there were many emotions involved,” said Rea in an interview with BBC Sport NI’s Stephen Watson.

“The last few races the weight has been taken off my shoulders. I’ve always had that nervous excitement throughout my career, but it turned more into stress and I wasn’t enjoying that side of it.

“These past 18 months have been marred with injuries and setbacks and tough times. Issues like that are always worth it when you’re winning but it’s been a struggle these past couple of years.

The Northern Ireland rider explains that he is looking forward to “life at a quieter pace” but wants to “finish in a good way” in Spain.

“I want to finish this chapter safe and sound and enjoy the fruits of our labour. It’s been a massive career.

“While I was continuing to look ahead to the next race I did always manage to enjoy the moment. You’re in this bubble of always wanting more and I think since the announcement and being at peace with that it’s easier to look back at what we did achieve and feel incredibly proud.

“I’ve got a great life away from the circuit – with my wife, the kids, family, and these last four or five years being back home in Northern Ireland.”

The 38-year-old added that he was humbled by the reaction to his decision as he was inundated with messages from across motorcycle sport and beyond.

“I didn’t really expect the flood of messages from everywhere. Messages from the fans and from your peer group, rivals you raced against every weekend, MotoGP riders.

“It’s really nice. I never felt I would get that kind of reaction. It was amazing and I felt extremely proud.

“And while we say it’s the last race, is it ever the last race? I don’t know what’s next.

Rea says he is weighing up his options for the future and considering a number of possible options.

“I’m not sure exactly what’s next. I’ve been blessed to have opportunities to keep riding. I had a manufacturer ask me into a meeting room to try and tempt me out of retirement.

“There are a few projects. I’ve been considering doing some World Endurance racing, been considering doing some test riding.

“I’m not a guy who can just be at peace sat at home on the sofa. I need something to do – my talent, my life is Superbike, is racing, is motorbikes, and I still have that passion. Whether it’s competition or just riding a bike I’m not exactly sure yet, but for sure I’ll be riding in some shape or form.

“That might even be off-road – doing some other disciplines of riding or going back to my roots that I enjoyed so much. I’ve still got a lot of adrenaline to fix.”

The County Antrim racer says for him his first world crown was the “most special”.

“I think your first world title is always the most special. It’s what everybody dreams of, to be a world champion in their discipline. It just kept snowballing and to win six titles in a row just showed how competitive we were as a team, not making mistakes and always working hard to improve.

“Because when you set the benchmark and the level, everyone was improving, but we kept finding ways to improve ourselves as well.

Rea secured eighth and seventh place finishes while deputising for the injured Casey Stoner in the Repsol Honda team in 2012 but says he can have no regrets about not competing in the series as a suitable offer never came his way.

“I can’t regret something that was never really a realistic option. Back in the early days when I was with Honda I got offered the chance to ride the open class bike, a ‘B’ class ride within the MotoGP championship, but that was never on my radar.

“When you’re competing at world championship level you want at least the competitive tools to fight with the best guys in the world.

“I’ve always been very fortunate to be mentioned about going to MotoGP or having talks with MotoGP. My management has always pushed hard and had the right conversations but I’ve never had a contract in front of me to go there.

“So I can’t really regret it but I did get that opportunity in 2012 with the most iconic team and bike in GP history. I feel like I ticked the box at least, got good points, raced against one of the greatest of all time, Valentino Rossi. I had that experience and really enjoyed it.”

Away from the track, Rea received recognition for his achievements in the form of finishing second in the 2017 Sports Personality of the Year award, receiving around 3,000 fewer public votes than the winner, renowned athlete Sir Mo Farah.

“It [SPOTY] was incredible. When I was second it was amazing, at an awards ceremony that people have to vote for.

“I got a huge vote which we can be proud of, for Northern Ireland, but also for the motorcycle world to share the spotlight with mainstream sport, was really nice and proud to put motorcycling on the map.”

Rea expects his final weekend in World Superbike to be a special one.

“I imagine it’s going to be a weekend full of emotion. It’ll be nice to have all my family there.

“I’m retiring but the last round of the series everyone wants to finish well because it’s the one that you remember throughout the off-season.

World number one Carlos Alcaraz says players are misunderstood when they want to play in exhibition tournaments alongside the demanding tennis calendar.

Alcaraz, 22, was among those critical of the workload in Asia, where some players struggled physically, with the Spaniard saying he would consider skipping mandatory events to prioritise his health.

He is top seed at this week’s lucrative Six Kings Slam in Saudi Arabia, a six-man tournament from 15 to 18 October that also includes Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev, Taylor Fritz and Stefanos Tsitsipas.

There is a reported $4.5m (£3.4m) in prize money on offer at the exhibition, with some players also likely to have been paid seven-figure sums to appear.

Reports say the winner could take home up to $6m (£4.5m).

But Alcaraz feels that shorter-format events such as the Six Kings Slam are less gruelling than tour competitions, and therefore make fewer demands on the players.

He said: “A lot of players are talking about the calendar, how tight it is with a lot of tournaments, tournaments of two weeks, and then making excuses with exhibitions.

“It’s a different format, different situation playing exhibitions than the official tournaments, 15, 16 days in row, having such a high focus and demanding physically.

“We’re just having fun for one or two days and playing some tennis, and that’s great, and why we choose the exhibitions.

“I understand [the criticism], but sometimes people don’t understand us, our opinions. It’s not really demanding mentally [compared with] when we’re having such long events like two weeks or two and a half weeks.”

Alcaraz won his eighth title of the season in Tokyo last month despite an ankle injury sustained in his opening match that prompted him to pull out of the Shanghai Masters.

He will play in Saudi Arabia despite the injury not being fully healed. “Everything’s OK,” said Alcaraz. “I’ve been recovering the ankle as much as I can.

“I don’t feel 100% – the doubts are there when I’m moving on court, but it improved a lot and I’m going to compete and perform well in the Six Kings Slam.”

The Premier League table is starting to take shape and while results are obviously what matter most, they don’t tell the whole story in terms of how teams have been playing so far.

Expected goals (xG) tells us how much teams have been dominating games by creating lots of good chances up front and restricting opponents to few, bad ones at the back.

Penalties are excluded because they distort a team’s numbers on how threatening or vulnerable they are in general, especially at this early stage.

Below is a graphic showing how good teams have been in attack and defence, with the most dominant teams in the top-right corner and the least impressive in the bottom-left corner.

The higher up the chart, the more dangerous a team’s attack is while the further to the right, the more solid they are at the back.

Arsenal and Manchester City have been the most dominant sides, with the Gunners having the best defence and fourth-best attack and City the joint-best attack and fourth-best defence.

Both Manchester United and Chelsea have one of the top five attacks in the league but worryingly also rank in the bottom five defensively.

Liverpool’s back-to-back defeats following five straight wins gives a more accurate picture of how they have been playing, while Tottenham have needed to be very efficient to make up for their lack of dominance in games.

Aston Villa’s early-season struggles are no longer to do with finishing – they have now scored six non-penalty goals from an xG of 6.0 – but simply because they have not been playing well.

While promoted sides Leeds and Sunderland have adapted quite well to the top-flight, Burnley have struggled to make the jump so far with both the worst attack and the worst defence.

Looking at teams’ attacks specifically in the next graphic, United, Arsenal and Liverpool have taken by far the most shots, averaging around 15 per game.

But the reason why City and Crystal Palace have the best attacks overall is because they are creating much better chances, averaging around 0.14 xG per shot.

Brentford are a strange side because while they are averaging just eight shots per game, the quality of those chances has been so high that their attack still ranks mid-table overall.

When we look at how teams are defending, Arsenal and Newcastle have been so impressive because they are giving up both the fewest shots per game and the hardest chances to score on average.

If you look simply at the number of shots that teams are giving up, Manchester United look good defensively since only Arsenal and Newcastle are facing fewer than their 9.1 per game.

But not all shots are the same and Ruben Amorim’s side are currently giving up by far the easiest chances to score in the league, averaging 0.16 xG per shot faced.

Burnley meanwhile are facing by far the most shots at 18.4 per game, four more than any other side, although thankfully the quality of those chances is not that high.

Finally, while most teams’ expected goal difference marries up quite closely to their actual one, it is clear that Tottenham are by far the hottest side in the league in terms of form.

Not only have they been the most ruthless side in front of goal by scoring five more goals than expected given the chances they have had, at the other end goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario has had to be at the top of his game, preventing more goals than any other keeper in the league (2.9).

Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca has been given a one-match touchline ban after being sent off in the last-gasp win against Liverpool in the Premier League.

The Italian was shown a second yellow card of the game by referee Anthony Taylor for leaving the technical area to celebrate with his players following Estevao Willian’s 95th-minute winner against the reigning champions this month.

“It was alleged that the manager acted in an improper manner and/or used abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour during the fixture, which led to his dismissal around the 96th minute,” the Football Association said.

The FA said Maresca admitted the charge and accepted the standard penalty.

Maresca, who was shown a yellow card for dissent earlier in the game at Stamford Bridge, has also been fined £8,000.

It means he will not be in the Chelsea dugout when the Blues travel to the City Ground to face Ange Postecoglou’s Nottingham Forest on Saturday, with assistant coach Willy Caballero expected to deputise for the former Leicester City boss.

This will be Maresca’s second touchline ban since becoming a Premier League manager in June 2024.

Returning head coach Andy Farrell has included captain Caelan Doris in his Ireland squad for the autumn internationals, but Joe McCarthy misses out.

Doris, who has not played since undergoing shoulder surgery in early May, recently returned to Leinster training, but it remains unclear if he will be fit to face New Zealand in Chicago on 1 November.

Lock McCarthy, however, was not considered after failing to recover from the foot injury he sustained during the first British and Irish Lions Test against Australia in July.

Ulster forward Cormac Izuchukwu and Munster wing Calvin Nash also miss out because of injury, while full-back Hugo Keenan had already been ruled out after undergoing hip surgery following the Lions tour.

Leinster prop Paddy McCarthy – Joe’s younger brother – is the only uncapped player in the 34-man squad, but the Irish Rugby Football Union [IRFU] says uncapped Munster duo Edwin Edogbo and Brian Gleeson and once-capped Connacht wing Shayne Bolton will travel to Chicago as “cover”.

After facing the All Blacks at Soldier Field in a rematch of their 2016 meeting, Ireland host Japan, Australia and world champions South Africa in Dublin.

In a largely familiar-looking squad, Leinster’s Sam Prendergast and Munster’s Jack Crowley will once again vie for the starting fly-half spot. Ciaran Frawley is the third fly-half selected with Farrell opting against calling up Leinster’s Harry Byrne.

At scrum-half, Farrell has picked British and Irish Lion Jamison Gibson-Park and Craig Casey, who captained Ireland to the summer Test wins over Georgia and Portugal. There is also a return for Connacht’s Caolin Blade, who is preferred to club-mate Ben Murphy.

Robbie Henshaw, Bundee Aki, Garry Ringrose and Stuart McCloskey represent an experienced cohort of midfield options. Jamie Osborne is another option in the centres, but the 23-year-old is also a frontrunner to deputise for Keenan at full-back.

Wingers James Lowe, Mack Hansen, Tommy O’Brien and Jacob Stockdale are included. O’Brien impressed on his first Ireland outings over the summer with two tries apiece in the wins over Georgia and Portugal.

Forwards (19): Thomas Ahern (Munster), Ryan Baird (Leinster), Finlay Bealham (Connacht), Tadhg Beirne (Munster), Jack Boyle Leinster), Thomas Clarkson (Leinster), Jack Conan (Leinster), Caelan Doris (Leinster, capt), Tadhg Furlong (Leinster), Iain Henderson (Ulster), Ronan Kelleher (Leinster), Gus McCarthy (Leinster), Paddy McCarthy (Leinster), Andrew Porter (Leinster), Cian Prendergast (Connacht), James Ryan (Leinster), Dan Sheehan (Leinster), Nick Timoney (Ulster), Josh van der Flier (Leinster)(73).