Having just welcomed his first child into the world, we sat down with Liam Rush and found out how he is adjusting with the new addition.

So you’ve just become a father for the first time, what did you have?

We had a baby girl, her name is Layla Jules Rush. She was born on December 5 at 8.29am. She weighed in at six pounds 14 ounces and was 48 centimetres in length.

Did you know you were having a girl or was it a surprise?

No we left it as a surprise, my wife Amy thought we were having a boy, but all the signs were there. When we found out we were expecting we were actually in Sweden and we were having pancakes for breakfast. The brand on the bottle of pancakes was ‘Layla’ and the day before she was born we were in the supermarket and I went to grab a bottle of coke. There were only two left on the shelf and you know how they have the ‘Share a coke with’ promotion, well the names on the last two were Amy (my wife’s name) and the other was Layla!

Had you always liked the name Layla?

Yeah from the Eric Clapton song, Layla was the only girls name we had picked.

How was the birthing experience?

Really good, Amy had her through a natural birth, after 4 and a half of hours of labour, so pretty quick. She was born ten days early, within 24 hours of my return from our New Zealand trip.  Her timing was perfect because when she was meant to be due I was going to be on the road again playing and she happened to be born on my only day off.

How would you describe fatherhood?

It’s a bit of everything really, it’s tiring, exciting and challenging at times.

Have you been hands on?

Yeah I’ve been changing nappies and trying to share the load, Amy is doing a fantastic job. I’ll feed her during the night with a bottle to allow Amy to get a little bit more sleep, it’s called a dream feed.

How do you balance your Tigers commitments with fatherhood?

I think it’s the best time for me to have a child, while I’m playing we’ll have training in the morning and I’ll be out of the house from 8.30-2pm and then I’m able to be home and spend the day with her where if I was working a 9-5 job I wouldn’t be home til 6 or 7 at night. I find seeing her smile gives me more energy, she can be crying all day and then if she smiles for one moment it’s all worth it!