'I hope to be an NFL player in a year': Christian Wade on his exit from rugby

Christian Wade speaks to the Guardian from the back of a New York cab. Coventry it isn’t but the winger who left Wasps to shoot for the NFL hasn’t entirely succumbed to American glamour. For one thing it is typically bitterly cold. For another, halfway into our second question his car enters the Lincoln Tunnel, a squalid transit hell under the oily Hudson.

He’s been traveling a lot and he yawns now and then but he’s in the States, trying to reach the big time. His answers are tinged with excitement. He was freezing in New York on behalf of the fitness brand Freeletics. His next stop is the IMG Academy in Florida, where he will be competing alongside other athletes on the NFL International Player Pathway.

“In a year’s time I hope to be playing NFL,” he says. “[I’m] still learning, still trying to get better, just pushing for the best. Whatever team I’m at, trying to make it, trying to soak up information and experience.”

When Wade quit rugby last year, he met encouragement but also polite bemusement. At 27 he was in his prime, scorer of 82 Premiership tries, third on the all-time list. But his international career had stalled at one England cap, in Argentina in 2012, and one Lions tour, 2013, as a replacement in Australia.

“I’ve always loved rugby,” he says. “I’ve played it for 15 years, I’ve travelled the world … But I wasn’t loving it any more, really. It was becoming harder to motivate myself and I wanted to compete against the best athletes in the world.”

Wade says he won’t go back to rugby. He’s similarly decisive when asked if he would be satisfied with a place on an NFL practice squad – a group that usually consists of untested young players and journeymen – a level reached by two other rugby converts, both big forwards. Alex Gray swapped Newcastle for the Atlanta Falcons; Christian Scotland-Williamson left Worcester for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“I’m trying to make the roster,” Wade says, meaning the 53-man first-choice list at any one of 32 teams, from New England on the east coast to Seattle on the west. “[Practice squad] is not really an aim for me. If I try to aim for that I’m not aiming high enough. I would still merely be adequate. My aim is to make the roster.”

Questions about whether he watched the Aussie league great Jarryd Hayne nearly but not make it with the San Francisco 49ers, or even the Patriots special teams player Nate Ebner go the other way to play for the USA sevens team at the Olympics, are essentially irrelevant. Wade is no Martin Johnson, the England legend who famously dreamt of playing tight end.

“I’ve always been a fan of NFL,” Wade says, “but not a diehard fan of one team. I didn’t watch religiously [in the UK] but I watched it. I managed to get the back end of the Chiefs v Colts game [on Saturday] and I watched the Rams and the Cowboys. Obviously when you’re here in playoff time it’s very hard to escape it.”

For the next three months, the idea is that Wade will not be able to escape it at all. The IMG Academy hosts a sort of football cleat camp where international prospects are drilled in the basics of the game.

“I’ve spent a couple of weeks there already,” Wade says, “just to get used to the campus and get acquainted with the coaches and the sort of training we’ll be doing. I’ve had the holiday season to chill, and now we come back with the rest of the guys tomorrow. We’ve got a guy from Mexico, a guy from Brazil, three guys from Germany, myself from England and the final guy from Australia. It’s a mixture.”

The Australian, former Cronulla and Kangaroos full-back Valentine Holmes, would no doubt agree that success will be a brutally big ask. Most rugby players who have gone before them, among them the Saracens and USA lock Hayden Smith and the Canada sevens player Adam Zaruba, have not achieved their dream.

Fortunately for Wade, Alex Corbisiero, the England and Lions prop who now presents rugby for NBC, is an old mate and has leant support off the field. On it, what Wade knows has been imparted, in part, by Gray and Scotland-Williamson. Asked if Gray’s recent description of training so tough players are left needing intravenous drips worried him, Wade laughs.

“I haven’t experienced that level of training. I know there are some people who do IV drips before games, so you stay hydrated. It’s probably something for the bigger guys, the 300lbs guys. I’m just under 200lbs, so it’s not necessary, I can just use the normal method. You know, water bottles.”

Therein may lie the rub: Wade has plenty of bottle but his playing weight at Wasps was around 185lbs, which is small for an NFL player, and he left rugby saying England had become obsessed with size, forcing him to the margins. But then, you also sense his fierce determination might count for him.

“The training method is different from what I’ve been exposed to,” he says. “I haven’t got a team yet, like Alex and Christian, with a specific regime, but it is a whole lot different, a lot more intense. The need for recovery is a lot more apparent. You’ve got to be able to give 100% to everything you’re doing, whether it’s one rep or whether it’s a session. You have to be able to recover quickly and do it all over again. If you don’t you’re not going to be able to deliver the sort of performance you need.”

If Wade can deliver, he is hoping to do so as “a running back, with the kind of idea of being on special teams as a punt returner” – a route taken by Hayne, who had problems keeping hold of the slimmer, pointier ball used in the NFL. Wade also thinks the coaches in Florida – martinets, one suspects, with clipboards, camo hats and drill sergeants’ barks – are “probably looking at me with the ability to play in the slot as well as a receiver”.

It’s clear by the lingo alone: Bristol on a wet Sunday at the Ricoh is now just a memory. Christian Wade has a whole new ball game to learn.