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My uncle played rugby, and my dad played football, and they used to argue which game was the roughest - and everybody agreed rugby was. It's a great team sport, and to be successful, every person has to play in the same level.

When things could've gone really bad, rugby caught my interest and I really stuck with it. The sport brought me, maybe off the streets where we'd be fighting, into putting in a good effort in the rugby field where you're kind of rewarded for that rough behaviour instead of in trouble with the law.

I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn't even stand up, let alone kick the ball.

We played a lot of sandlot ball, so we were used to tackling each other, or falling on the concrete, things of that nature. And nine times out of 10, our flag games turned into tackle anyway. So when I got to high school, tackle football was kind of natural.

I had such a tie with my eyes and my hands. I could look at a telephone pole 40 yards away, take out a 7-iron, and hit it 10 times in a row. I had something special. And somehow, I really understood the game, all without having a lot of guidance.

Football? Forget it. I didn't have that thing inside me where I wanted to smash against somebody and watch them break. I was too sensitive for that and disliked being that sensitive.

It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.

I loved the game. We played because we loved it.

I have loved football as an almost mythic game since I was in the fourth grade. To me, the game wasn't even grounded in reality. The uniform turned you into a warrior. Being on a team, the mythology of physical combat, the struggle against the elements, the narrative of the game.

I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.