Rees Lightning: Louis Rees-Zammit on NFL dreams after quitting rugby for US

Published

2 years ago

March 16, 2024

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Welsh rugby star Louis Rees-Zammit says making it in the NFL would be the “most proud moment of my life”.

The former Gloucester, Wales and British Lion winger sensationally quit rugby in January to switch to American Football.

The 23-year-old is completing a 10-week training and development camp as part of the International Player Pathway (IPP) in Bradenton, Florida.

The initiative is designed to attract players from outside the US to American Football.

On 20 March, Rees-Zammit will attend a Pro Day alongside 15 fellow attendees. It’s a showcase for their talents at which NFL team scouts will assess their suitability for a contract.

In an interview with Sky News, Rees-Zammit – nicknamed Rees Lightning because of his pace – talked of his ambition, his inspiration and of the NFL’s biggest fan, singer Taylor Swift.

On pursuing an NFL career

I’d regret this for the rest of my life if I never gave this a go. I fully believe that I can make this happen.

My dad has always been a role model to me and he played as a teenager – he loved the sport and brought me up to love the sport.

He always supported Washington. We had a season ticket at Manchester United for the 2014 season, so I would have been 13 and, literally every journey up, I used to watch someone called DeSean Jackson – I used to watch all his videos on the three-hour journey up to Manchester, I’d watch all his videos, his documentaries and stuff like that.

I want to continue (my dad’s) legacy and create my own and inspire however many people I can back home to give this a go and believe in themselves.

On telling his Wales coach Warren Gatland and colleagues

My teammates are so supportive, I couldn’t thank them enough. They all messaged me straight away, good luck messages.

Gats (Warren Gatland) was so great with me. He only found out five minutes before the announcement, so it was tough for him and it was tough for me, because it was definitely the toughest decision I’ve ever made in my life.

I gave him a ring and he was like: go out there, smash it.

He asked ‘if it doesn’t work out, what happens?’ For sure, I’d be going back to rugby. So, he left it like that and I’m so appreciative of that and I can’t thank the boys enough for the support they’ve given me.

On the challenges of switching to NFL

The transferable skills, in terms of ball in hand, playing running back… is going to be a lot easier for me.

Obviously, the helmet and pads are completely different. The first few days were difficult, in the sense that you’ve got to use your peripherals (vision) a lot, but we’ve been doing it for seven weeks and it’s one of those things where you just get used to it.

It’s more route running, being able to accelerate and stop on a dime.

You’re trying to run a route and then, all of a sudden, you’ve got to turn around and try and catch a ball, with a helmet on, but you just get used to it.

We do hundreds and hundreds of repetitions so, after a few, you get a feel for where you are.

Mentally, you have to be so switched on. It’s such a cut-throat business that the margin for error is so small, you can’t forget anything.

A lot of it is mental and being able to transfer the stuff you learn in the classroom to the field.

In rugby, there are probably, like, 20 plays. In the NFL, you’ve got to try and learn 80-100 a game.

On Pro Day, the showcase for NFL scouts

It really excites me to be able to show people what I can do in this sport. I’ve worked incredibly hard over the past seven, eight weeks to get a feel for the game, not just on the field but off the field as well.

I want to show these scouts what we’ve all learned and I’m just so excited to get to that day and perform.

I fully believe that I can make this work. If I had any doubt in my head that I couldn’t do this then I wouldn’t be here.

On Taylor Swift, the musician and celebrity NFL fan

I think it’s great for the sport. She’s attracting people to love the sport and it’s great. I like Taylor Swift as a singer, as well.

There are a lot of people that have mixed reviews or mixed opinions, but I think it’s doing really good for the sport and it’s attracting a lot.

On the Welsh team he left behind

It’s a new World Cup cycle in there, so we’ve got a lot of youngsters, which is great. We’ve had very good periods of play, it’s just putting an 80-minute performance together is the issue at the minute.

I have no doubt that the more games you play, the chemistry will get better, the boys will know how each other play, how each other run.

It’s difficult to just throw a load of players in there and just say “get better”.

What would success look like?

It’s not about money, it’s not about location, it’s about having a plan.

I don’t want to look too far ahead. I have no preferences on teams, I just want to be at a club that supports me and I will do everything for them.

For my dad to be able to say that his son’s in the NFL would be the most proud moment of my life – not just my dad, my brother and mum are so supportive of me and I could never do this without them.

We’re so close, we do everything together, I mean, they’re going to come out and live with me.

They’ve supported me since I started sport at six, I think they probably missed about eight games in my whole life and that was purely because of lockdown.

They’ve travelled the world with me and I can’t do enough to give back to them.

If he returns to rugby

I started at Gloucester and I’d want to finish at Gloucester. Ultimately, if they didn’t give me the opportunity to play professional rugby then I wouldn’t be here today.

So I absolutely love Gloucester, I love the club, I love the supporters, I love everyone there. So, Gloucester would be my preference.

US

What’s affected by internet outage – all we know so far

Published

10 hours ago

October 20, 2025

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What's affected by internet outage - all we know so far

Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage.

The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.

Follow live updates here

On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.

Here’s what we know so far.

What has been affected?

Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.

All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.

Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:

• Snapchat
• Ring
• Roblox
• Amazon Web Services
• Life360
• My Fitness Pal
• Amazon
• Xero
• Signal
• Canva
• Fortnite
• Blink Security
• Zoom
• HMRC
• Clash Royale
• Clash Of Clans
• Asana
• Wordle
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• Epic Games Store
• Duolingo
• Amazon Alexa
• Jira
• Vodafone
• Tidal
• Coinbase
• Atlassian
• IMDB
• Amazon Prime Video
• Pokemon Go
• BT
• Peloton
• EE
• Ancestry
• Square
• Playstation Network
• Eventbrite
• Amazon Music
• Sky
• Flickr
• Hay Day
• Rocket League
• Perplexity AI
• Dead By Daylight
• Bank Of Scotland
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax

What has AWS said?

AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.

What is Amazon Web Services?

Mickey Carroll

Science and technology reporter

Amazon Web Services was named as the cause of the problem by the chief executive of AI company Perplexity.

Aravind Srinivas posted on X saying: “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”

AWS describes itself as “the world’s most comprehensive” cloud service.

It offers companies a virtual backbone, giving them access to servers, databases and storage without having to build their own infrastructure.

Millions of businesses are thought to use AWS, so when something goes wrong, it can have a huge impact. AWS hasn’t put out any information on the outage. Sky News has contacted the company for comment.

In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.

“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”

The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.

Concentrated in the US

ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.

A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.

Has something like this happened before?

US

Donald Trump mocks ‘No Kings’ protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet

Published

1 day ago

October 19, 2025

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Donald Trump mocks 'No Kings' protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet

Donald Trump has responded to so-called “No Kings” rallies with an AI video of himself in a fighter jet, pouring brown sludge over protesters.

Millions of people were expected to take part in the demonstrations this weekend – the second such gathering after an initial nationwide day of protest in June coinciding with the US president’s birthday.

The term “No Kings” reflects the belief by some that Mr Trump is behaving like a “king” and some in his administration are depicting him as a monarch.

On Sunday, the president shared the AI video on his social media platform, Truth Social.

In the clip, an AI-generated version of Mr Trump is wearing a crown and sitting in a jet with “King Trump” written across it, to the soundtrack of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, from the film Top Gun.

The jet then drops thick brown sludge on to AI-generated protesters.

Supporters say the marches are a patriotic defence of free speech, while critics are calling them anti-American.

Mr Trump’s Republican Party has dismissed the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies.

Many of the events featured marching bands, huge banners and signs, as well as effigies of the president and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes.

The protests follow Mr Trump’s return to the White House and come against the backdrop of a government shutdown which has closed federal programmes and services.

There has also been criticism of what some see as an aggressive executive, confronting Congress and the courts, in ways that protest organisers believe are a slide toward authoritarianism.

So far, the atmosphere at most of the protests appears to have been largely energetic and upbeat, with protesters calling for accountability and protections for civil liberties.

Organisers said events would be peaceful – a direct response to Republican and Trump administration claims that the protests could be unsafe.

US

US airstrike destroyed ‘drug-carrying submarine’, says Trump – as survivors repatriated

Published

1 day ago

October 19, 2025

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US airstrike destroyed 'drug-carrying submarine', says Trump - as survivors repatriated

Two survivors of a US airstrike, targeting what Donald Trump has described as a “drug-carrying submarine” in the Caribbean, have been repatriated to their home countries.

The US president posted footage of Thursday’s operation, part of a recent military campaign targeting boats transporting drugs to America.

“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“US intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics,” he added.

The US military staged a helicopter rescue for the survivors on Thursday after the strike on their semi-submersible
vessel, suspected of trafficking illegal narcotics. They were then transported to a US Navy warship.

Two other crew members on board were killed.

President Trump confirmed the survivors would be returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador “for detention and prosecution”. Both countries subsequently confirmed they had been handed over.

“America will not tolerate narcoterrorists trafficking illegal drugs, by land or by sea,” he added.

On Saturday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X: “We have received the Colombian detained on the narco submarine, we are happy he is alive and he will be processed according to the law.”

The Trump administration has said previous strikes in the Caribbean have killed 27 people, raising concerns among some about the legality of the military operations.

The strikes also come against the backdrop of a US military buildup in the Caribbean that includes guided missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear submarine and around 6,500 troops as the US president escalates a standoff with the Venezuelan government.

On Wednesday, Mr Trump disclosed he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, adding to speculation in Caracas that the US is attempting to topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Mr Maduro has denied any connection to drug smuggling and claimed the US boat strikes are a pretext for regime change, and violations of sovereignty and international law.