10 years ago | Orrell St. James RLFC, Wigan, UK | 18th November 2012

This is a post to mark the dedication of junior sports team families. For nearly five years, our Sunday mornings were mostly dominated by junior rugby. To the uninitiated, that may sound like an hour or so on the touchline but the reality is more like a lifestyle choice.

Two-hour training sessions, twice a week, travel to away games across the North West, pre-match team breakfasts, social occasions, fundraising activities, club outings and parents’ nights out. Then there’s all the stuff you need: the kit, training kit, footwear, safety wear, kit bags, a first aid kit, balls, kicking tees, raffle tickets, club merchandise. And then all the constant, incessant washing, It quickly takes over a large part of your life.

But then you wouldn’t have it any other way. The opportunity to reinforce the importance of achievement, of belonging to a team, the life-lessons of sacrifice and effort, the irregular moments of pure joy when everything goes well and the value of forbearance when things get tough.

It doesn’t end there. There’s a camaraderie amongst parents, a pooling of resources to keep the club functioning well and stories of club events that will only ever resonate quite as strongly to those who were there. What often starts with an invitation to ‘join in’ can become a defining part of family life.

And then one day, with almost no notice, it can all come to an end. You can’t force kids to carry on in a team just because you’ve moulded your life around it. You have to respect that and mould your life around something else. In many ways, it can be like a bereavement. As such, the best advice is not to mourn the loss of what was there but to be thankful that it was ever so special.