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.
With all the traveling and promotion I've been doing for 'Murderball,' its been difficult keeping up with my rugby training.
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.
As soon as you have an average game, everyone is quick to criticise and say, 'You suck; you shouldn't be playing rugby.'
I have interests outside of rugby and have been cultivating them for when I do decide to hang up the boots.
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.
Soccer is a continuous game, rugby is a continuous game, but for the physical elements that are involved in playing a football game and the number of plays that you play, I don't know that it was ever intended to be a continuous game.
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.
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.
I've got my head fixed on the next part of life. I know there will be an adjusting period of just not being a rugby player for a while, and over that period I'll get my head around what the next challenge involves.
Looking back, my whole life seems so surreal. I didn't just turn up on the doorstep playing rugby; I had to go through a whole lot of things to get there.
I never ever believed that I would be able to give up on this dream which has driven me to live, breathe, love and embrace the game of rugby from the earliest days that I can remember.
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.
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.
I wasn't, you know, Mr. Popular. I was somewhere in the middle ground. I was quite alternative, the things I liked to do. Skateboarding, at the time. Playing in a band as opposed to playing in the rugby team. You know, that kind of thing.
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 beat...
I was absolutely a non-starter at games. My report for rugby said, 'Nigel's chief contribution is his presence on the field.' I used to pray for rain and sometimes it did rain - and we played anyway.
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.
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 was overwhelmed with messages of support I received from people around the rugby world. Sometimes you take it for granted, but I can't thank people enough for how much they supported me.
I've spent a lot of my teenage years working on sets. I've missed out on more than just playing rugby, but I think I've managed to keep my feet on the ground and keep my friends around me.
