Robert kicks about his emotions

At the time when Grimble was being offered to me, hardly anyone wanted me to do it. I just felt something - I had an emotional response to the script. It made me cry - and it's unusual for an actor to be affected that much by a script.

So I thought I'm going to follow my instinct. Ray Winstone phones up and says, "I've been offered this Grimble thing." I thought then, this is meant to be. The size of the film had a lot to do with it as well. I'd just come off of Bond - a £73 million budget, whereas Grimble was only £3 million. If you take that £70 million off, what you get is more what a film should be about - the people. It's more human. There's no explosions, no guns. I wanted to get back to that, to that size of film.

I play Eric Wirral, a former footballer turned PE teacher, who mentors a young boy. He's marking time. He's doing nothing. He's not even teaching them how to play football. It's the smallest performance I've ever given. Even the boys are towering over me, these young kids.

The softness and the quietness of the character I loved. I'm a great football fan, and I understood the way he was. I spent a lot of time speaking to ex-players, like Peter Barnes - an England international who played for Man City and Man United. He said that all through his career he had met players like Wirral, who were gone after a single season. Imagine being 19 years old and playing in front of 40,000 every week, and having it taken away from you. It was easy to find that sadness, that sense of a life lost.