Arsenal winger Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain nearly chose rugby over football

Posted Saturday, October 08, 2011 by The Sun

Arsenal winger Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain nearly chose rugby over football
EGG CHASER ... how Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain might look as an England rugby star

ENGLISH football's hottest prospect Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has revealed how he could have played for the Irish... London Irish!

Arsenal's £15million wonderkid enhanced his growing reputation with a hat-trick for England Under-21s in their 3-0 win over Iceland on Thursday.

The 18-year-old winger has already caught the eye of Three Lions boss Fabio Capello, who dropped a major hint this week that he may call him into the senior squad in the build-up to next summer's Euro 2012 finals in Poland and Ukraine.

But had things turned out differently, the Ox could have ended up representing England at RUGBY.

Fortunately for the nation's football fans, his prowess with the round ball shone through first and he joined Southampton's academy at the age of seven.

But he said: "My senior school didn't play football. It was a rugby and cricket school and as I was on a sports scholarship I was forced to play rugby.

"I played scrum-half or full-back and I was all right at it.

"I got a trial for London Irish but couldn't do it because Southampton wouldn't let me."

You get the feeling his dad and mentor Mark Chamberlain — the former Stoke, Portsmouth and England wideman — would not have been too thrilled either by the prospect of his boy becoming an egg chaser.

But Oxlade-Chamberlain said: "If I hadn't wanted to become a footballer, Dad wouldn't have made me do it.

"But from day one I showed him I did want to do it and he did everything to help me along. He's doing the same now with my little brother Christian, who is 13 and down at Portsmouth.

"He's my dad's next little project!"

Despite his big-money summer switch from Saints to Arsenal, Oxlade-Chamberlain still turns to his dad regularly for advice.

He said: "My dad speaks a lot of sense and keeps me grounded.

"He'll watch me play and, if I've done well, he'll have a quiet word with me and say, 'Well done'. If I've had a not-so-good game, he'll let me know about it."

Chamberlain won eight caps for England from 1982-84 and his boy joked: "He didn't play too many times, did he!

"He always tells me I need to win more caps than he did, so that fires me on."

After moving to Arsenal, making his Champions League and Premier League bows and scoring his first international goals for the U21s, Oxlade-Chamberlain is now looking forward to another milestone — moving into his first pad.

He said: "I am about to move into my own place.

"I'm hoping my mum will come up once a week to do my washing.

"I'll handle living on my own. You've got to learn somehow. I'll take it all in my stride like I do everything else."