Ģ������Ƶ

“I’m having talks next week with Robin Cousins and a couple of Jersey people because it would be great for the summer to do something a bit different,” explained Kyran, who won ITV’s Dancing on Ice last year.

'Crazy body-popping'

Kyran, who was Jersey’s Mr Battle in 2007, has hung up his rugby boots and donned a pair of skates to make his debut professional skating performance in the show Holiday on Ice.

He’ll be skating alongside Olympic and World Champion skaters and will perform two very different numbers - one to music from the blockbuster Titanic and another “crazy body-popping, break-dancing” routine:

“I’m sort of like Jekyll and Hyde in the show,” he described.

No team-mates

It goes without saying that the disciplines of skating and rugby are worlds apart. For one thing Kyran’s always been used to playing as part of a team:

“You haven’t got other people affecting your performance so it’s just yourself and your partner and you’ve just got to concentrate - so that’s something I find quite hard.”

Kyran Bracken playing for England

Looking good

Whilst grace, poise and looking good are paramount in skating, putting make-up on and ensuring you’re wearing a dazzling smile as you tackle are about as far from a rugby player's mind as possible:

“Obviously [in skating] you’ve got to think about how you look – the way your feet are pointing, your toes are pointing, that all the angles are matching your partner…there are so many things to think about that are so outside what I’m used to.

"It’s an amazing transformation to go from putting on your boots to go out there and beat the opposition to put on your skates to look as graceful as you can,” Kyran said.

Practise makes perfect

Another major difference between the two sports is that you can arrange and practise precisely what’s going to (fingers crossed) happen on the ice:

“Rugby’s very reactive and you can’t plan exactly what’s going to happen each moment of the game, but in skating you can. You can actually rehearse, rehearse, rehearse to get things so drilled in.”

'My trousers are pretty tight'

And if Kyran Bracken sets your pulse racing you can rest assured - he’s confirmed that there will be plenty of spandex and sparkle in his costumes!

“My trousers are pretty tight,” he said, “they need to be so when you skate they don’t flap around too much.”

And despite being a strapping rugby lad he’s not afraid of a few hundred sequins:

“I don’t mind getting into my costumes and prancing around, so to speak. It’s all part of the show and the glamour of it all.”