ISRAEL Folau believes God broke his ankle in 2009 to teach him a lesson about boozy weekends and random one-night stands with women.

Folau believes God took him out of the NRL to endure two years of toil in the AFL to humble him.

Then, only after Folau had reconnected with God, did He open the door to rugby, in which he now stands as the man to end 12 years of Australian agony by leading the Wallabies to victory over the All Blacks in tonight’s Bledisloe Cup opener.

And if you think Folau is crazy, he doesn’t care.

“I want to advertise who Jesus Christ is, which is the thing that means most to me,” the Wallaby fullback says, patting his heart hard.

“I know it’s got nothing to do with footy, but that’s what drives me every single day.

“Everything is not always about footy, it’s about me as a person generally, wanting to be that person that I was called to be.

media_camera Israel Folau breaks his ankle playing for the Broncos in 2009.

“A lot of people don’t or wouldn’t understand what I’m saying, but that’s what really drives me.

“I just want to encourage all the athletes who are Christians or believe in God, to not be ashamed, really share what they believe.

“Because in the sporting world in Australia, it’s really rare for athletes to come out and speak about Christ.

“I am not ashamed to come out and say it, because that is what I truly believe in. Everyone has their different opinions, that’s their freedom of choice, but this is what I truly believe in.”

Most don’t know this about Folau, but he was once as boozy as the best of them during his NRL career.

“There was a time there where I was playing at the Broncos where I was really going out a lot and drinking a lot,” he says.

media_camera Israel Folau and former Broncos teammate Jharal Yow Yeh partying at Brisbane’s Normanby Hotel at the end of the 2009 season.

“There was one particular time, in 2009, a period where I was doing that for a couple of months, drinking a lot from week to week.

“Then we were playing against the Warriors, it was a Friday night game, and I had planned to go out on the weekend from Saturday to Sunday, just getting plastered.

“I broke my ankle in that game. When I got to the change-room, I knew then that was punishment, God wanted to slow me up on the things I was doing.

“In the previous weeks I was going out, coming home at 6am, I’d wake up not feeling that great, I wasn’t as happy as I thought I would have been.

“That experience stands out for me. When I broke my ankle I knew God was trying to teach me something.

“I had lost track, that was due to alcohol, going out on weekends, hooking up with girls. The morals I was taught were totally opposite.

“I fell into the culture of the way professional athletes live. I was meant to go through that to realise what my identity is, and that is in Christ. Not to get sucked into what the world wants, but to believe in what is internal.

media_camera Israel Folau celebrates after the Waratahs won the Super Rugby final.

“It’s very challenging when it’s only you that has that within the team culture.

“I’m blessed to say now that it was all part of the journey.

“God changed my path. League was everything to me, I put that in front of God, and He took me away from that to go to AFL.

“This is what I truly believe; God used AFL, which was something different for me, to start all over again.

“When a person struggles, they turn to something they know will help them. For me, God used that to humble me, and make me think ‘God is first, not the sport’.

“A lot of people would deem the AFL tenure as a failure, but spiritually it allowed me develop in the way God wanted.

“That has led me to this path with rugby. I wouldn’t have seen this door open, but the things that have happened in the last 18 months were already written down in God’s book, and I see that.”

media_camera Folay enjoys a laugh at Wallabies training.

Folau adds: “I grew up as a Mormon, and my family left that church [in 2011] because different doctrines and beliefs they had weren’t what we believed was right.

“Now we’re part of a small Christian church where I can see the difference; my relationship with God now has gone to another level I didn’t think was possible.

“All of the changes that have happened in my career and my life has been since I left the Mormon faith. That’s nothing on the Mormon faith, but I know God directs myself and my family step by step in our lives, and I can speak on behalf of my parents and younger brothers; they’re in a really good place now.

“People might think [my success] is luck, or a coincidence. But all the things that have happened in my career in such a short time - I’ve put in a lot of hard work - but I believe only God makes that happen.”