I was a rugby star who became NFL trailblazer – now I’m on prime time Saturday night TV

Alex Gray has enjoyed a career like no other having moved from rugby star to NFL trailblazer to the face of prime time Saturday night television.

The 32-year-old grew up in County Durham and became part of the Newcastle Falcons academy before breaking into the first team in 2010 and moving onto London Irish where he made his name primarily as a no.8.

After representing England Sevens, Gray took the bold decision to try his luck across the pond by making his name in American football.

Back in 2017, opportunities weren’t as forthcoming as they are today with rugby stars like Louis Rees-Zammit using the International Player Pathway to forge a career in the NFL, but for Gray the move was all down to determination.

He told Hawksbee & Jacobs: “When I started there was no International Player Pathway really.

“There was three of us guys training on a random field and in a random gym and we went in there and showed that there is a little bit of talent around.

“We were kind of the canaries down the mine in that sense, but that programme has come along hugely.”

Gray became the first British rugby player to forge a career in the NFL, getting his big break with the Atlanta Falcons.

He joined the practice squad and then signed a reserve/future contract with the club where he ultimately stayed for three years.

But despite being a trailblazer for rugby players moving into the sport, Gray insisted that it was far from a smooth transition.

“A lot of people try and make comparisons between the two games, but they’re just completely different,” he said.

“That’s kind of what I found in my own journey in that there was a lot of things that I was really good at – those being the extra bits like being the extra man one-on-one and catching the ball.

“I could do that stuff but what let me down were those fundamental basics of knowing where to line up and not jumping offside.

“Those guys have been doing it since they were six years old and you’ve got to put that on top of being against the absolute best athletes in the world in a pressure cooker, because that’s what the NFL is.”

Gray added: “I say this in the best way possible, the NFL when you’re on the inside is not a nice sport.

“It’s not like rugby or football where you’re hanging around with each other outside of the training facility and going for coffee with each other because the hours are so long.

“You’re in at 7 and sometimes you’re not leaving the film room until 11 at night so people just want to keep to themselves.

“You’ll make friends on the offence, but there’ll be guys in the defence that you’ll never have a conversation with and will just walk past in the corridor without even acknowledging each other.”

Asked how hard it was to adapt to the game, Gray said: “It’s very different culturally to rugby, I’d say.

“What helped me was that I was a rugby player and so to the NFL they looked at rugby and just thought it was some sort of barbaric sport where no one wore pads or helmets and thought we were just a bit crazy.

“People are just trying to keep a job, at the end of the day. They don’t have time to look around at what one person or another is doing, there’s no time for that.

“The great thing about the NFL is that it’s so statistic heavy. If you play well, everybody knows it. You know it, the guy next to you knows it and so you can have no qualms about it.

“Everything is on tape, everything is measured and so you know who is top of the tree when it comes to that.”

After Gray left the NFL he returned to English rugby where he signed for Bath, however nothing could prepare him for his next role.

The 32-year-old was cast in the BBC reboot of hit TV series Gladiators, taking on the guise of Apollo.

But while he’s enjoying his newfound fame on prime time television, Gray says that his move to American Football was the making of him, saying: “I wouldn’t have chan