British NFL Star Louis Rees-Zammit on Living Fearlessly and Chasing Dreams

‘I’ve been through a lot of pain,’ says Louis Rees-Zammit, slowing down for emphasis. ‘A lot. Of pain.’

The former Wales and Gloucester rugby player is at his parents’ house in Llandaff on a brief holiday before returning to America to train with his new team, the Kansas City Chiefs. In January, Rees-Zammit, 23, broke a nation’s hearts when he announced his decision to leave rugby (a sport that has the status of a religion in Wales) in order to try his hand at American football. The English equivalent might be Jude Bellingham saying, ‘You know what? Screw football, I kind of fancy lacrosse.’

So being back in Wales – it’s emotional. ‘The second day… Ooh that hurt,’ says Rees-Zammit, describing the moment shortly after his return when he was lying on his back in Cardiff, wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake. ‘It was like an open wound,’ he recalls. ‘I tried to numb it as much as possible but it didn’t work.’

But, after nine and a half hours in the tattoo parlour, the designs on his left arm were complete. ‘I’m really happy with how they all came out!’ Rees-Zammit beams, as he shows me the enormous Greek mythology-themed design he had inked over his biceps.

There’s Zeus. ‘Got to be Zeus. He’s the god of all gods. He’s a bit of a beast.’ There’s the snake-headed Medusa. Hang on, isn’t she a baddie? ‘Yeah, but she had ice in her veins.’ There’s also a huge lion, representing ‘strength and power’ and a little silhouette of the Rees-Zammit family on his wrist: dad Joe, mum Maxine, plus Louis and his older brother Taylor as children, all holding hands. ‘My family means a lot to me,’ he says.

As for shattering hearts in his rugby-loving homeland? Louis is okay with that. ‘You get the hate with it, but I completely block that out – I have done for years,’ he says. ‘I know people are going to be disappointed that I’ve left rugby, but at the same time, I’ve got a new challenge and I need to work extremely hard to make my dream come true.’ He pauses. ‘I’m just really, really happy to be honest!’ He looks it.

Louis Rees-Zammit talks a lot about dreams. ‘One of the reasons I wanted to do this is to inspire other people to make this move… to make their dreams come true,’ he tells me. And the dream of playing in the NFL is one that Louis had nurtured ever since he was tiny, even if it had seemed utterly improbable. He grew up playing a variety of sports: football, rugby, cricket, tennis, golf. ‘Growing up in Wales, rugby is absolutely massive, so that’s what I decided to pursue. But I always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to play in the NFL one day. My family and I had spoken about it for years and years.’

Rees-Zammit is extremely close with his family: until January, he was still living in his childhood home, commuting to Gloucester every day for training. Taylor has accompanied him to Kansas City; his mum and dad will follow in the autumn. ‘I’m old enough to live on my own now. But I’m a big kid. I like having my family around,’ he says.

Sport is how the Rees-Zammits bond: Maxine played netball for Wales, but it was Joe, a property developer, who nurtured the unlikely passion for American football. Joe played the sport himself in the 1980s – when the game had a brief vogue in the UK – and watched whatever NFL games he could locate on TV. Meanwhile, he encouraged his boys to dream big. Taylor and Louis went to The Cathedral School in Llandaff (a fee-paying school where they learned Latin, not Welsh) and every summer, the family went to Florida on holiday: Disneyland, Universal Studios, sunshine, beaches, water parks. ‘I’ve always loved America,’ says Rees-Zammit. ‘How friendly people are. How much they want you to be successful. Everyone is so positive and supportive.’

In the event, it was a phone call on a cold, wet, January day that opened up the opportunity. It was from James Cook, the head of the NFL’s International Player Pathway (IPP) programme, an annual bootcamp-cum-showcase established in 2017 to help non-Americans break into the sport. A space had opened up – did Louis want to come?

Louis sat down with his family to go through the pros and cons. Obviously, it was a massive risk. ‘I’m kind of leaving a sport that I’m getting to my best at, to play one that I’ve never played,’ he says. In the end, they decided that the greatest risk of all would be to never take it. ‘I don’t want to have any regrets in life, and I know it would be one of the biggest regrets I could ever have,’ he says.

After he made the decision – on Friday 12 January – there followed a whirlwind few days. The next day, he was in Scotland, helping Gloucester to a 21-20 win over Edinburgh. That evening, he informed the Gloucester coach, George Skivington, and soon after that, Wales coach Warren Gatland. There was a contract from which to extricate himself – the paperwork took until the following Tuesday. Soon after, he was on his way to Tampa, Florida, along with 15 fellow hopefuls from eight countries. ‘I didn’t have time to process it. I didn’t talk to the media. I didn’t have to answer questions and doubt myself.’

There was, it’s fair to say, a bit of consternation back home. Taylor recalls driving back from Gloucester with his brother on the day that the news went public. ‘This guy pulls up and puts his window down and goes, “By-eee!” And he drives off.’

His brother is good at blocking this stuff out, Taylor says. ‘He was brought up in that social media world. He’ll read it, but it doesn’t affect him; it motivates him.’ Besides, the overwhelming response was positive, particularly from those who knew him well. ‘He was nervous about having that conversation with Skivs [Skivington] and Gatland. And Gatland was like, “Well mate, you’ve got to go and kill it. And we’ll be here for you if things don’t work out.”’

Louis stresses that the positive messages far outweighed the negative ones. ‘From family, friends, past coaches, teammates – even players that I’ve come up against – I’ve had thousands of messages of support,’ he says. And in many ways, his journey to America presents a different kind of fairy tale. If you’re a rugby fan, I’ll bet that you’ve got into at least one conversation with an American about whose boys are harder, faster, tougher. It’s irresistible to bet on whether our boy really can make it there, in sporting Disneyland.

Rees-Zammit is not the first rugby player to attempt the transition to the NFL, but he is by some distance the most high-profile. ‘Rees Lightning’, as he’s known (he once hit 24.2mph in a game), is one of the most exciting players of his generation. In 2021, he became the youngest player since 1959 to join the British & Irish Lions tour, and stardom followed. Last year, ahead of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, he released the documentary Being Louis Rees-Zammit. ‘He’s very un-Welsh in that he wants to put himself out there,’ commented his Welsh teammate, Dan Biggar. As we watch Louis have his photos taken for the Men’s Health cover, Taylor describes his brother (affectionately) as a ‘bit of a diva’.

There are fans who feel that any diva-ishness is against the spirit of rugby, a sport that places a lot of emphasis on teamwork, community and tradition. There are others who argued that a few breakout stars such as Rees-Zammit were precisely what was needed to save rugby from an existential crisis of safety concerns, financial difficulties and cultural problems. Taylor notes that his brother’s departure wasn’t wonderfully timed from a rugby point of view. ‘Gloucester were struggling in the league. It was about to be the Six Nations. There wasn’t that much hope for Welsh rugby and Louis was one of the guys who brought a bit of positivity to the game.’ The fact that Wales slumped to the Six Nations wooden spoon immediately following his departure didn’t help.

For his part, Rees-Zammit insists that he’s never actively pursued fame. ‘I’ve always been focused on the job and letting the off-field stuff take care of itself,’ he says. Still, Rees-Zammit exemplifies a shift in sport towards a more social media/reality TV-friendly paradigm. Younger fans are increasingly less loyal to teams and more interested in following stars. In this context, Louis Rees-Zammit’s Ted Lasso-in-reverse narrative feels irresistible. He’s already been snapped up by Roc Nation, the agency founded by Jay-Z, which counts Marcus Rashford, Vini Jr and basketball star LaMelo Ball on its sporting roster, and if he manages to make a success of it in America, well, the sky’s the limit. The best-paid rugby union players max out at around £1m annual salary. Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs’ quarterback, earns approximately $45m (around £35m).

Still, that’s an enormous ‘if’. But Rees-Zammit has two points in his favour. The first is his explosive pace. American sports watchers are already marvelling at his 40-yard dash time of 4.3 seconds. And the second is his age. ‘I’m 23. I’m pretty much the perfect age to learn. I didn’t want to play catch-up with all the players coming out of college.’

It should be stressed that the NFL needs people like Louis Rees-Zammit, too. As popular as the NFL is in America, it’s never attracted global interest like football, basketball or even cricket. Hence the marketing blitz: more coverage on Sky Sports and ITV; live games at Wembley and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium; and a concerted effort to recruit new talent via the IPP programme, as well as NFL coaching facilities in England and Australia.

The way Rees-Zammit describes the IPP camp in Florida, it sounds a little like the bit in The Hunger Games where tributes from all of the districts are sent to ‘The Capitol’ to hone their skills. It was intense: 15 hopefuls, 12 weeks of training, 6am to 7pm sessions, six days a week. ‘But that’s what we needed,’ he says. ‘A lot of players didn’t even really know the rules of the game.’ Among the fellow tributes were Travis Clayton, 23, formerly playing for Basingstoke in the eighth tier of rugby, snapped up by the Buffalo Bills; and Bayron Matos, a 6ft 9in former basketball player from the Dominican Republic, eventually picked up by the Miami Dolphins. But it was Rees-Zammit who garnered the most interest.

After his ‘Pro-Day’, he had more than a dozen offers from teams, including one from the all-conquering Kansas City Chiefs. He chose the Chiefs because he ‘needed to go for a team that had a plan’, he says. So, in the spring, he moved to Kansas City (most of which is, confusingly, in Missouri), home to an incredible jazz scene, some of the tastiest barbecue in the US and, Rees-Zammit is duty-bound to say, the best sports fans in America. ‘They’re sport-mad. The baseball stadium is literally 50 yards from the American football stadium. It’s one massive car park. Rugby is big. But this is a completely different scale,’ he says.

The locker room culture also took him by surprise. ‘There’s a lot more music. The players dance a lot. It’s different!’ Are they all actually a bunch of softies beneath all that padding? They’re not, he stresses. ‘I think the main difference is that with pads on, you can afford to be more reckless.’ Which sport hurts more? ‘Maybe ask me that question in a year’s time and we’ll see how my body’s feeling!’ he laughs.

Meanwhile, nutrition is ‘just as important as training’, Rees-Zammit says. I have the strong impression that what’s on offer at the Kansas City Chiefs’ canteen is a little bit better than at Gloucester RFC. ‘There’s a load of options, carbs, protein… you can have whatever you want,’ he says. ‘You can take as much home as you want as well.’

I guess they don’t want you stopping for roadside barbecue on your way home, right? ‘It depends what your macros are! But everyone is on the same page with this. That’s what makes our franchise so good.’

Franchise. He’s already picked up the language. But the greatest challenge is mental, learning the intricacies of the game. The classic sportswriter Ernest Crawley once observed that the difference between soccer and rugby is the difference between modern and ancient warfare. ‘In the former the ball is the missile, in the latter men are the missiles.’ In American football, the players are not so much missiles as high-spec drones, programmed with plays, tactics and moves. ‘In rugby, there are only about 20 plays a game. In American football, there are over 100,’ Rees-Zammit says. ‘And when you’re out there, you can’t forget them.’

He’s certainly not getting distracted by cheerleaders or any of that. ‘No. Single,’ he sighs when I asked him if he’s dating anyone. ‘I’ve got a lot on my plate at the minute. I’m open to a relationship, but I’m not forcing one… I’m very focused on what I’ve got to do.’

Still, as much as Rees-Zammit is loving life, there’s a slight nervous edge. The 53-man squad for 2024/25 will be selected by the end of August. This is the immediate challenge with the 17-man practice squad as a secondary aim. ‘If I make the 53, unbelievable. If I make the practice squad, unbelievable.’ If he doesn’t? ‘I’ll think about what’s next.’

Understandably, he doesn’t want to dwell on the prospect of returning to Wales, tail between his legs and asking for his ball back. Far more motivating is what awaits him if he makes it through.

He also wants to do it for his dad. ‘He didn’t have the pathway, so that’s what I want to leave behind,’ he says.

As for Wales, he’s happy enough to be back here – but it doesn’t sound like he’s too homesick. In fact, besides family and friends, there’s only one thing he really misses. ‘There’s no Nando’s in Kansas City, which I’m absolutely gutted about,’ he says.

So the thing he misses most about Wales isn’t its beautiful coastline, or the sound of male voice choirs drifting through the valleys, but a South African restaurant specialising in Portuguese chicken? He pauses. ‘Okay, I will miss running out in the Principality. All the fans. Singing the anthem. At the same time… I’m just very happy with where I’m at now.’

What scares him? ‘What scares me?’ he seems surprised at the question. ‘The dark…? Nah. Nothing. I’ve got full confidence in myself. You have to have that confidence or you’ll get swallowed alive.’