Whatever sport I played – rugby, rowing – there were always naturally talented people who were better than me.
With all the traveling and promotion I’ve been doing for ‘Murderball,’ its been difficult keeping up with my rugby training.
After my second film, ‘Simhadri,’ which was a very big hit, I made ‘Sye,’ a small college movie with a rugby union backdrop.
My old man works in the postal service, my mum in a hospital and my brother in a factory. They’re my family and when I play rugby I’m representing them. But coming out was different. More than anyone, I feared for my father. I used to be a postman myself and so I know that working environment.
I grew up playing rugby and I kind of never lost the muscle size.
I’m from Samoan heritage, and with the rugby in our blood and everything, I always felt I’ve been tough, and that my tolerance for pain is pretty high.
I’ve spent my whole life playing football. My father didn’t want me to play rugby because he felt it was very hard on the body, so at school, I was encouraged to play football, and that’s where everything started.
I thought that if I could play rugby on TV, I’d be able to get my mum a house. That was the driving factor.
A bugbear of mine is bragging rights in regional derbies: it would be a lot more worth to the regional game if we did something special in European rugby.
I’ve got it all: I’m good-looking, I’m educated, I can sing, and I can play rugby. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
When I was growing up Harlequins were interested in signing me because I was very fast and strong at an early age, but I wasn’t interested in rugby at the time.
For me now, I will continue to focus ever harder on my goal of being the very best I can be with Toulon Rugby Club and continue to embrace and enjoy wherever that path takes me.
The last time I played rugby, I busted my nose bad, and that’s incentive not to get down and dirty in the park anymore.
I knew I was gay at 18, but to come out then would have meant I would not have achieved what I did in rugby. I loved rugby so much and it was so important to me that I made the decision to keep my sexuality secret. People may disagree with that, but it was my belief and my decision.
Coming from Australia and playing rugby, you just think that soccer is a bit soft, but I’ll tell you what – it’s not. It’s rough as guts. It’s great.
Welsh rugby has done its dirty washing in public. It’s nothing new. We’re a tribal bunch. If warring parties want to sway public opinion, they do it in the public arena.
I was born and raised to play rugby. I have two parents who are hugely proud of my rugby achievements, but even they say that maybe it was just a platform to give me a voice to do something better, and rugby wasn’t what I was all about. Something else was.
Rugby gave me a confidence. I was quite shy and relatively timid, but it gave me the confidence to be a little bit more out-going and back myself a bit more.
We all say we enjoy playing rugby, but most guys don’t really show it – and some guys I don’t think actually enjoy it. So every time I arrive in the morning, I’ve always got a smile on my face. Once I lose that enjoyment, I will stop playing.
I started off playing rugby league as well as union. I switched between fly-half and wing, but I preferred to play fly-half. I liked to be at the heart of everything. I liked to be involved.
The Tory party is like a rugby union match in which all 30 players are wearing the same strip. They’re not sure who they are grabbing round the knees, but they’re having a lot of fun doing it.
I wasn’t picked for any of the sports teams at school because I was half the size of everyone else, but now everyone assumes I must have been some sort of rugby player.
My senior school didn’t play football. It was a rugby and cricket school, and as I was on a sports scholarship, I was forced to play rugby.
I came from a rugby school and rugby nation, but I fancied giving football a go, and luckily, it paid off.
Rugby is a different game. There is an interruption every two minutes also in American football. Our soccer is a moving game: play, play, play, move, move – you don’t interrupt.
I came out of high school, where my heroes were, like, Michael Jordan and a lot of local rugby players – and on the movie front, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
In rugby union, I was out wide kicking stones with the pretty boys.
I come from a sports family and my husband is a rugby player.
Ultimately, rugby players are like surfers. You look for the perfect wave, but you don’t always find it. And if you did, you’d probably pack up and try something else.
I’ve always been confident in my rugby ability but with England I had to adjust my behaviour.
It’s a really exciting time to be involved in Welsh rugby.
After giving up rugby, I wanted to keep busy.
Your name or what you’ve done on the rugby pitch is not going to carry you through for the rest of your life. I realise I’m going to have to eventually do something else, and that does frighten me a little bit.
We don’t want Welsh rugby to be seen as healthy or upbeat. If we think that, we could become complacent or stagnate.
A vote for Japan is a vote for the future of rugby. We will do our best to make rugby a global sport.
I still get a great buzz from rugby.
I know what it feels like to be one of those conservative rugby lads because I went to a similar school growing up.
I had to write 1500 words on advertising and marketing at the weekend for my business management course, and you can’t think about rugby while you are doing that!
It’s only when you leave the rugby bubble that you understand that negative criticism is not personal, it’s reality because we don’t always get everything right.
I had dreams of being a professional rugby player.
When I started my professional rugby career, in 2002, there was one guy filming training if you were lucky.
The only time I’ve ever been knocked out in my entire life was in a rugby game when I was about 13. I used to play on the wing. The opposing winger has the ball in his hand and he’s running full speed at me. I go down to tackle him and he jumps up and his knee hits my temple.
I’m a part of major league rugby. We had a league meeting to decide what to do with anthem protests, and even though I personally agree with what they say they are protesting as inequality and judicial system and incarceration rates among minorities, we decided all should stand and respect every national anthem.
I like to think I play rugby as it should be played – there are no yellow or red cards in my collection – but I cannot say I’m an angel.
I would never tell anybody to give up hockey – the great sports we have here – basketball, lacrosse – rugby coming into its own – we’ve got so many great team sports, and I say hold on to them.
I got a pommel in my eye. A pommel is the end of a sword – not the sharp end, the other end. It wasn’t actually a sword fight. I was rugby tackling somebody but we hadn’t rehearsed with all the kit on so suddenly there’s a whole other part of the equation and that did really hurt.
I was a football fan before I became a rugby fan.
But Id missed the boat in rugby, I was stuck in a rut and I needed a change. I was lucky to have darts as an option.
I lost a dear friend of mine from a rugby injury at 26. We don’t usually deal with mortality at that early age and it’s given me an appreciation of time, of trying to fit everything in.
Playing football and rugby is the Samoan sport. It’s part of the conversation at church. It’s part of the conversation in their barbershops, in the grocery stores. It’s what everyone is aware of and familiar with. They take a lot of pride in the beating you can take in the course of that sport.
I’m always embarrassed by those rugby player autobiographies which get written by journalists.
I did several corporate gigs as a presenter, worked on a few branded campaigns and also made money from my rugby events company and my business, Leaf Hospitality.
I have just fallen back in love with rugby league again.
I used to play rugby, polo, tennis, and cricket in school. It was only in the 1990s, when I used to live just opposite Harrods in London, that I started putting on weight. I used to have my breakfast there every day.
It’s really important for kids to read right through childhood but I know sometimes it’s hard to get them to read. The key is finding something that they’re passionate about, and for me it was, and still is rugby, and being healthy and active, and a lot of kids are like that too.
I know part of me is going to die when I stop playing rugby.
My kids are my life. Sitting on the sidelines watching my son play rugby, helping them with their homework or getting them ready for their exams – I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.
The sports are almost different cultures so saying I prefer one to the other is wrong. Rugby union is guided by a lot of rules, league by the players.
He was a professional rugby player in the area that I played as a youngster. So a lot of people who I went to school with knew who he was and knew that he was black. So I would get racist taunts in school.
I retired from rugby because I was old and getting really slow.
