Ben Foden has left his marriage and his rugby career in England to join Rugby United New York where he is enjoying the new challenge, despite an undeniably difficult time off the field

“It was probably a good time to come to New York,” says Ben Foden, “because it got me away from the British media.”

He catches himself and laughs. Here he is, having coffee on the corner of Bowery and Bleecker … with the British media.

We have been talking about the former Sale, Northampton and England full-back’s first few weeks with Rugby United New York and about Major League Rugby in which RUNY are one of nine professional teams.

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Foden is enthusiastic about an opening win in San Diego and a trip to New Orleans to come. He happily discusses the standard of play – “top of the Championship” – and the challenge of starting with five road games in a row.

New York is not fit for outdoor sport until at least mid-March and partially as a result RUNY players are always on the move: weights in Long Island City, training indoors in Brooklyn, promotional work in Manhattan. Home games will be at a ballpark in Coney Island and Foden has signed up for two years playing and coaching.

He seems delighted with it all but one off-field thing has inevitably palled: the attentions of the British tabloids. Last summer, large headlines announced Foden’s split from Una Healy, once of the group The Saturdays and mother of his two young children.

“At the moment anything that’s published about me is never very good,” he says, “and pretty rightly so, because I was the one who committed adultery.

“But at the same time, it wasn’t the only reason for our divorce to go through. It’s not ideal but we’re very amicable, we’re getting through it. We’re not the first people in the world to get divorced. We’ve got two little kids we adore.”

There is an experience familiar to all who come to live in New York: a moment among the towers in the financial district, say, or wandering around midtown, when the alien enormity of the place suddenly sinks in. Foden, who was supposed to be here with his wife and children, admits to a fiercely concentrated version. This is no village outside Northampton. He has been in the US three weeks, he has already flown to the west coast and back for a game and there are more long trips to come: Seattle, Houston, Austin, Colorado, Utah, Toronto.

There is a sense Foden, for all his media-savvy confidence and conviviality, might have been a little caught out by it all. As we talk the snow outside turns to freezing rain and he admits he only packed one coat. True New Yorkers wear three at a time.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ben Foden: ‘It’s hard because I’m away from my son and daughter but I know they’re in a great and loving environment.’ Photograph: Harry Britt/RUNY

“It’s hard because I’m away from my son and daughter,” he says, with a sigh. “But I know they’re in a great and loving environment with Una, because she’s a great mum. We never argue about that.”

Social media is in play and, he says, he and his ex do not argue about much, even the recent mortifying instance in which the Sun published his profile from Bumble, an internet dating site.

“I’ll tell you the real story behind that,” he says, with a slightly more caustic laugh. “I picked up Una from the airport a couple of weeks after we’d first been here, and we were sort of joking about dating. So I loaded up Bumble, and we did the profile together, joking around. And then I realised something dodgy was going on with it and the next day it was all over the paper.

“It’s not ideal but at least I can laugh about it and especially so with Una. If she hadn’t known about it I can see it would have been a bit of a knife in the back. But we were messing around, so we can laugh and she can call me a bit of an idiot.”

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It’s a raw subject and we are in a public place, a photographer hovering and snapping. But few people turn round and those who do most likely do not know the man with the espresso won 34 caps for England, went to the 2011 World Cup and won the Premiership with Northampton.

There is however a sense Foden’s candour is not entirely the product of his new anonymity. James Kennedy, RUNY’s garrulous Irish owner, is keenly aware that to achieve success in New York’s saturated market he needs characters and stories to sell. In his words, in a notoriously frank city, that means having players who are “open and transparent with the media and say whatever the hell is on their mind”.

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Evidently Kennedy has found one of those and part of his plan is to use the Englishman as a face of the franchise, an “influencer” in Foden’s words who can build his own brand while building that of the club. RUNY players are encouraged to take public transport, to talk to people about the team, MLR and themselves. Laughing, Foden says James Haskell, a notoriously gregarious former England teammate, would have fitted in well.

He also laughs about a forthcoming appearance, in Britain, on a celebrity edition of the reality series SAS Who Dares Wins. To shoot it, in the aftermath of his split from Healy, he “disappeared to Chile for nine days to really put myself through it”. Among those who went through it with him were the Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton, someone from Made in Chelsea and the former Conservative MP Louise Mensch, herself now a New Yorker.

In the aftermath of his self-inflicted trial by tabloid, such is Foden’s new reality: one trip into the unknown quickly followed by another, on the rugby field and off it.