You go into the Lions camp with preconceived ideas about players and teams and then find guys are actually very different, and the beauty of the Lions is that all those characters are moulded into it. I find that exciting.
When you've done something for more than a third of your life, your whole adult life, and then all of a sudden you're going to have to switch off and say, 'No more,' you want to grasp as much of it and enjoy the last few years of it as much as you can. Because you can't get those years back.
It's happened a couple of times in training when I hyper-extend my back. Some facet joints send all the muscles in my lower back and lumbar-spine into spasm.
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 have always played into the belief that you are only ever borrowing the jersey; you never own the jersey because someone has gone before you and there is going to be someone after you, so it's a case of giving the jersey maximum respect.
Team sports are very important for shaping personalities. It's important that kids understand the mentality behind playing team sports and playing for one another and playing with friends.
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.
The 2001 tour to Australia would have been a great highlight in my career if the Lions had won the series. That might sound strange because it was a great tour in many ways, but, for me, the more time goes by, the less of a career highlight it becomes, and just more of a frustration.
