Quotes About Rugby

I was watching the Five Nations as a kid, I'm very fortunate to have been able to pull the red jersey on a few times, and now I'm able to assist the team, assist the young players coming through, and help the guys who do have the ambition to play more for Wales.

I was training my whole younger life to be a sportsman. Rugby was my main thing.

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.

As a teenager, I was always this strange mixture of kind of vice-captain of the rugby team and sensitive artist type the rest of the time. I was sent away to this public school in the middle of nowhere, and I think we managed to completely miss out on normal youth culture.

I think New Zealand Rugby do an exceptional job, the way it's set up from the All Blacks, right down to grassroots. There's a clear path young players can take if they want to be an All Black, if they're talented, or if they get opportunities.

As a kid in New Zealand, you play cricket in summer and rugby in winter. I played cricket and hockey. Not rugby. I wasn't brawny enough for it. Or silly enough, perhaps.

I've got bigger legs than my husband, who's a rugby player, so trust me, if I was going to intentionally flash a part of my body, it wouldn't be my thighs!

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 had seen the ethos of rugby, and I was very much an admirer. For us, it's a beautiful sport, what I guess what Pele called soccer in Brazil. It's so simple; it's easy to understand. You can play five on five or 15 on 15.

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.

I'd say I am a fly half. As regards being 12 for England, I've not tried to play any different. I guess I've been like another 10. Obviously, you do some things differently, and you might not have your hands on the ball as much - but you're still in the game and constantly communicating.

Rugby is great. The players don't wear helmets or padding they just beat the living daylights out of each other and then go for a beer. I love that.

I would have thought there's no greater country to watch rugby than New Zealand.

I come from a country that lives and breathes rugby, and I didn't think there would be anywhere else in the world that could be the same. But New Zealand takes it to another dimension. It's extraordinary how much passion Kiwis have for the game.

If you can beat New Zealand, then you're probably going to win the World Cup.

Every rugby player in Australia and New Zealand or wherever they are from wants to play in the World Cup, and I am no different.

We grow up in New Zealand from a young age getting up at 3am to watch the All Blacks play South Africa or England, it's part of who we are. So to be an All Black now is amazing.

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 just remember, it seemed to be the thing to do to get up a three o'clock in the morning and watch the All Blacks play England or South Africa.

I've always said that playing rugby in Spain is like being a bullfighter in Japan.

Playing rugby has been my whole life and for me, keeping fit was part of my job. But when I gave up my career, I was determined to keep motivated, and that isn't always easy when you have lost the competitive edge to it.

I come from a sports family and my husband is a rugby player.

There is a difference going onto the pitch with No. 10 on your back rather than No. 12, and you need to have a clear understanding and be unbelievably prepared for what you are going into and what you will face.

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.