I really want to remain involved in rugby. I want to continue and have an influence on the game.
I take a laid-back approach to a lot of things in life and, at the end of the day, rugby’s just a game.
International rugby is a step up, and this is somewhere you come to get better and improve as a player.
If you can’t give 100% to rugby then you can’t do it justice.
I’ve always had a rugby ball in my hand, so it was inevitable I was going to play.
I am a rugby player and first and foremost I am a man.
I know my dad would have loved me to have played rugby. He was a No. 8. I started off playing centre and ended up playing at the back of the scrum, No. 8 as well, just picking it up and running with it.
I was never ever attracted to any of my rugby mates; I was really good at switching off my emotions and I wouldn’t have even considered crossing that line.
When I was younger, I played football and table tennis for local teams. I also played mini-rugby at primary school – I was tall for my age – and Preston Grasshoppers wanted me, but I wasn’t that interested in rugby. It was always going to be cricket for me.
A friend of mine – one of the rugby girlfriends – got qualified to do lip stuff and she was like: ‘I’m gonna do it for free, do you want to do it?’ And I’d always wanted to try it so I said yes.
I’m a huge Rugby Union fan, which is a bit like American football – but tougher.
I will support Ireland at rugby, but when England and Ireland are playing, I sit on the fence.
The scrum and the tackle are the two really contentious areas of the game. If you get those two aspects right, most rugby matches will work in your favour.
In rugby I think it is good to have a bit of a persona, a bit of a character because we are one of the last things that isn’t necessarily controlled.
It is very easy to make athletes, and it is very difficult to make rugby players with that rugby instinct. I would like to think I have got a bit of rugby instinct and have become more of a rugby athlete along the way.
I love the 6 Nations rugby. I feel very Scottish then. I feel very Scottish now, sitting in the middle of Chelsea. But that’s part of our heritage – being part of Britain, part of Europe. I love being European.
I used to play rugby, which requires a lot of physical strength. The game requires you to get aggressive.
I’m thankful for the collaboration between the WRU and Ospreys, which will look after my best interests and enables me to play the best rugby possible.
I was eight years old and I was playing rugby for my local club.
I’ve always said that playing rugby in Spain is like being a bullfighter in Japan.
One of the more bizarre games I played as a kid was something called ‘kill the man.’ It was a cross between football and rugby, which found the person carrying the ball a target of some hungry tacklers. I still don’t know why we enjoyed the game because it was impossible to win.
It’s like a rugby team. If you’re picking for the World Cup final, you’re picking experience with youth. Everything is better off having that balance and that mix. I think that, especially, goes for the monarchy as well.
