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‘Then show me.’

He does as he’s told. He steps closer and places the headphones over my ears. They are far too big for my head, so I hold them in place.

‘Ready?’ he asks.

‘Ready,’ I reply, bracing myself, waiting for something so loud and powerful it blows the curls out of my hair.

He taps the screen of his phone and the opening of ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ by the Beach Boys fills my ears.

I stare at him, waiting for him to laugh, but he’s not kidding. This is really what he listens to.

I pull one side of the headphones away from my ear.

‘You do not listen to the Beach Boys before you play rugby league,’ I say.

‘I do.’

‘Really?’ I squeak.

Don’t get me wrong, because I absolutely love the Beach Boys, but they’re not going to fire anyone up, are they?

He turns his phone towards me. The screen shows a playlist filled entirely with Beach Boys songs.

I hit the skip button and ‘God Only Knows’ starts playing.

I look at him again, trying to make it make sense with the man who I know flattens people for a living.

‘How does this work?’

Eddy shrugs.

‘It’s about getting into the right frame of mind,’ he says.

‘The right frame of mind for what? Driving along the coast in a convertible?’

He laughs.

‘I’m a happy guy. It’s happy music.’

‘You’re a happy guy?’

‘Don’t let my face fool you,’ he says, keeping it perfectly straight for comedic purposes.

It’s funny, because he looks quite grumpy, but in a natural way with his dark eyes and his heavy brow. So much so that, when he smiles, it’s like someone turning on a floodlight.

I put the headphones fully back over my ears. The music is just so bright and warm and completely at odds with everything I assumed happened inside a rugby player’s head before a match.

‘So you listen to this,’ I say, probably raising my voice slightly because I can’t tell how loud I am with the music on, ‘and then happily crush people into the ground?’

‘Pretty much.’

I laugh, pulling the headphones off and handing them back. He takes them from me, but keeps hold of my gaze for a moment.

‘In the other room, the door you didn’t choose,’ he continues, moving the tour along. ‘In here we have an indoor warm-up room, where we get started before heading out onto the pitch. The walls are padded, so we can smash each other into them. Over there we have our basic training exercises – I don’t think they’re a trade secret, but don’t tell anyone just in case.’

I glance over at a whiteboard with a workout plan scrawled across it.

‘It lost my attention at “quads”,’ I joke – although it did. I’m not about to take up a professional athlete’s fitness regime, no thank you.