Marc Ellis

into the footwell and you'd lie on the footwell like a cat in a box.

And doing that with my mother from Boys and Girls Institute where we used to learn to swim.

There was no fucking heated pools back then.

It was just like, oh, no.

Yeah.

And then you'd literally, I spent more time, I think, in the footwell of cars than I did in the seat when I was a kid.

There was a feeling at the end of it of, I guess, achievement.

And, you know, what I liked about rugby was that if you made a mistake, you could go and try and whack somebody, you know, to get the frustration out or tackle somebody or, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, I did.

I liked being able to make, yeah, well, you know, hold your own and make good the mistakes that you made.

And, you know, I'm playing with the old man's red mittens from this bloody Arprey ski suit.

The whole thing was red with a red scarf and a red pom-pom hat.

It was so bad.

Yeah.

But he had these gloves and I put them on one day when I was like six or something and they were like that much too long and you're just standing there trying to catch the ball with these frozen floppy fingers.

So his bad dress sense made its way under the field every now and again too.

When did you realize you were potentially quite good at the sport?

Oh, we had these coaches back when we played for West.

I can't remember their name, but they were really strict and they'd literally boot you in the ass if you made a mistake.