The difference with football is you're out on the pitch, you feel as though you can do something about it, or score a goal. But when that horse goes down to post as an owner you have no involvement whatsoever. It's a lonely old place in the stand. It's just down to man and beast.

I have been very fortunate in that my career has taken me on a journey I could only have dreamed of.

If I'd still been in one piece from the World Cup and gone through my career, what type of player would I have been? No doubt about it, if I hadn't had as many injuries I would have been the all-time leading scorer for England.

If you look at anyone at the top of their profession, there has to be something a little bit different. You have to be driven, cold, hard and mentally tough as iron.

I think you're always fighting a losing battle when you're Scottish and I don't think that's right. I think the way that people look at Scottish football is wrong, but at the same time, we have to start proving it on the park and start showing it again.

My parents themselves both went to university, and they very much expected me to be an intellectual and go through further education, and it's to kind of their surprise that I became an athlete.

Being an 18 year-old football player, there are temptations. There are girls. There's going out to parties. There's doing this; there's doing that. There is drinking and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day it all comes down to maturity and what you have to do as a man to reach that next level. You have to be disciplined and make sacrifices.

A friend told me about a Nike competition, where they give you one minute to do tricks with a basketball. I wasn't going to go, but they were giving away free sneakers. I ended up coming in second place.