Pat Rice started training at Arsenal at age 14 and would spend all his spare time developing his fitness and football skills. Jon Sammels memory of Rice as a schoolboy who once requested Sammels autograph, "He used to live down the road and his brother, Alf used to have the hairdressers at the bottom of Avenell Road where a lot of the lads used to get their hair cut. Pat was always outside kicking a ball around". Getty images pictured Rice, with his wife Betty holding son Stephen as a child, taken at their Cockfosters home in 1975. Rice co-wrote with Steve Stammers his own regular football column, in the 1970s for the now defunct 'London Evening News'.