A Quote by Peter Cook

Playing rugby at school I once fell on a loose ball and, through ignorance and fear, held on despite a fierce pummelling. After that it took me months to convince my team-mates I was a coward.
When I was 11 my school held a sports day near Crystal Palace. We were told we were going to play a rugby match. The ball was eventually passed to me and I was obviously expected to run with it. I took one look at all these players charging towards me, placed the ball on the ground and walked off the pitch.
When friends wanted to go to the centre of town, they took a bus or tram. I took the ball and went running after them. School was hell because I had to put the ball on the ground. Outside, I was free, playing the ball.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! - incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
Anyone who's kicked a ball with their mates and played for their local club knows the buzz of being part of a team, playing without fear or pressure.
I wasn't the most prodigiously talented cricketer in Karnataka, let alone India. Some of my team-mates in my school team could hit the ball cleaner than I do. I had to work through that lack of talent, so to speak, that lack of natural flair. Runs never came easy for me.
And as you got older, the training became more developed and precise. We did plays, we had voice classes with great dialect coaches. But I was never into it on a school level; it was this kind of private little thing I did. At school I was a rugby guy. At school I was a rugby guy. I was causing trouble with my mates and skating and tagging buildings, and smoking bongs.
I started playing at six. I was at a school always playing football with my friends. But I was always bored at home. I asked my father if he could start me in a football team. He took me to a team called Rupel Boom, who were playing in the fourth division in Belgium, and I stayed there for four years.
Of course, I enjoy assisting my team-mates because playing no.10 is the position you have to serve your team-mates.
I guess my earliest football memories are of playing in the street and also the little pitches at school. I joined the local football team in my village when I was small, but we would play only once or twice a week. I honed my skills just by playing for fun with friends after school.
My parents are huge influences on me. My mother was an English teacher. My father played professional rugby and coached rugby for the Irish rugby team.
I tried sports, but I ended up being a paramedic. There was to be no rugby for me. Believe me, I did try, but I fell short. Rugby is tough, man.
I met my future husband Andy fighting for trans equality, and we fell in love. A couple of months after we started dating, Andy was diagnosed with cancer, and despite getting a clean bill of health several months later, eventually his cancer came back, and it was terminal.
There are excuses for dropping the ball or missing a tackle. But there are no excuses for not playing with a passion for your team-mates and as long as I get that response and they play well, I'll be happy.
I have my way of doing things, because I am that way, I try to raise my voice to motivate team-mates and make them aware that if they lose a ball it is not a problem, so I try to motivate my team-mates and to speak to them and, because I see the game from the back I see everything in front of me; communication on the field can help a lot.
I was an ambassador for Betway during the Rugby World Cup and at the moment I'm working as an ambassador for Artemis Investment Management. I also organised the first Rugby Aid in 2015. We had celebrities playing rugby against former England team players and raised a ton of money for Rugby For Heroes [a charity for former servicemen and women]. Only one celeb got crunched quite badly - Jaime Laing from Made in Chelsea ended up with cracked ribs.
2015 was an interesting year for me. After finally getting back behind the camera at the end of the summer to shoot the CW's 'Arrow,' I found myself a couple of months later in a federal building in downtown Los Angeles, trying to convince half a dozen security guards to let me make my EEOC appointment despite my expired driver's license.
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