The BIG ASK
dad, mum, born in South Africa, raised in New Zealand, college in USA and I live in England... so I’m an All Blacks fan, obviously! You just want to spend more time around him
CAMERON NORRIE, Britain’s No3, is currently playing in China but he tells MATTHEW DUNN he is keeping one eye on Japan, where six Rugby World Cup teams could claim his allegiance Q So, just who are you supporting in the Rugby World Cup? A My dad is Scottish, my mum is Welsh. I was born in South Africa and brought up in New Zealand. I went to college in the USA and have lived in England for a number of years now. I have got most of the teams playing covered! But who do I want to win the World Cup? The All Blacks – straight up. It has to be New Zealand for rugby. I grew up there and I also respect the team so much. But I do like Scotland too. Q Living in New Zealand as a kid, you must have played rugby yourself? A Actually not that much – at my school I was always playing soccer instead. But I did play some. I was always a half-back, one of the quicker ones. I stopped when a few big Maori and Polynesian players started showing up. One of them concussed my friend and I thought, ‘OK, time to focus on tennis’. Q You moved to Britain to do just that in 2013 – the year Andy Murray won Wimbledon. Is he an inspiration? A I have practised with him five or six times in the last couple of weeks and got to know him more. He has had an incredible career and having the opportunity to ask somebody like that questions is amazing, and you just want to spend more and more time around him and his team and listen to what they have to say. He is not really sure if he is even capable of getting to the top again or not and for him to put that on the line and risk failure… he does not really care what other people think. I respect that a lot. Q You went to college in the States - can you be a mentor for British teenage sensation Paul Jubb? A Didn’t he have a great summer on the grass! I am looking forward to helping him along the way. Now he is going to back to college and it is good that he seems mature enough to make those decisions. He would have had people telling him a lot of things. I didn’t miss out on anything by doing three years in college while others in my year were going through the Futures and Challenger circuit. Christian Garin, the Chilean who is now world No33, did all that while I was getting a good education. Then I came out with a fresh mentality while he was almost a bit burnt out, and made it into the top 100 before him.