Alex Gray: From missing out on Olympic silver to playing for the Atlanta Falcons

"It's like the volume has been turned up to 100. Every day is almost like a celebration."

Alex Gray has been in plenty of dressing rooms before - he captained England's sevens team and played club rugby for Newcastle Falcons and London Irish.

But they are nothing compared to what he is experiencing in his first season in American football.

"It's a bit funny, the guys rolling in in Ferraris," says Gray, the first English professional rugby union player to the NFL.

The 26-year-old, who stands at 6ft 6in, weighs 18 stone and can run the 100m in 11 seconds, has signed for the Atlanta Falcons - Super Bowl runners-up last season - as a tight end in their practice squad.

Though he will not be allowed to play in the NFL this season, he will train with the first team in the hope of securing a deal from next year.

And having never previously played a game of American football, apart from on the computer, he finally got the opportunity against one of the most famous teams of all - the Miami Dolphins.

His Falcons debut came a year to the day after the GB sevens team he should have been part of won Olympic silver in Rio.

"I always said what happened with the Olympics would make me or break me," he tells BBC Sport.

"I truly believe it made me. To play in my first NFL game, as an English guy who had never played the game before, was testimony to that."

Gray's Olympic dream was ended by an ankle injury picked up the weekend before GB's final sevens squad was named

The back row turned centre then signed for English Championship side Yorkshire Carnegie for the 2016-17 season, but a groin injury sidelined him for 12 weeks.

By the end of the season he had decided to walk away from rugby, and in May he moved to Atlanta as part of the league's International Player Pathway programme.

Within three months he had made his debut, coming on in the third quarter of a pre-season game against the Dolphins at Miami's Hard Rock Stadium.

"It was a huge mixture of emotions," says Gray, who signed for Newcastle aged 17 and captained an England team featuring players such as Owen Farrell, Mako Vunipola and George Ford in the Under-20s World Cup final.

"To have been able to play in my first NFL game was a huge event, not just because I am an English guy who has never played the game before, but because I had gone through what happened with missing out on Rio. To make my NFL debut a year to the day after the guys won the silver medal was just crazy."

But were there any nerves?

"The only time it hit me was when I was in the tunnel and I was waiting to go out, surrounded by guys in pads and helmets, and for a second I thought, 'what the hell am I doing">