Lightning-fast attacker lines up at full-back against England insisting that his gridiron tilt will only help his rugby
T
he late, great Tom Petty wrote the song that, ultimately, defined Louis Rees-Zammit’s American football adventure. “Runnin’ down a dream, that never would come to me …” Twelve months ago Rees-Zammit was in New Orleans watching the Superbowl and still hoping to carve out a multimillion dollar NFL career. Now here he is, back in a Welsh rugby shirt and eager to make up for lost time.
Sliding doors and all that. This weekend in America all roads lead to this year’s Superbowl in California: the Seattle Seahawks v the New England Patriots . But as Wales’s 25-year-old prodigal son prepares for the contrasting vibes and smells of a sodden Twickenham in February, he insists he still has no regrets about the gridiron flirtation that removed him from Six Nations circulation for two years.
That might sound fanciful given the lightning-quick Rees-Zammit never started a regular-season NFL game. Having abruptly left rugby in January 2024, he had a few pre-season run-outs for the Kansas City Chiefs before being released to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Rees-Zammit made their 90-strong training squad only for a back injury and a coaching reshuffle to limit his opportunities. In August last year, he returned to rugby. When he calls the past two years “a whirlwind” he is underplaying it.
