The final Tag Rugby match of the season
Our middle daughter has played tag rugby for the past year – not the typical sport for a girl to be involved in, but then her little sister does Judo, and her older sister used to play soccer (and has been asking about Karate) – so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.
It turns out she is pretty damn good actually – which is one of those parental double-edged-swords. At the same time as being proud that she's doing well, we're also thinking “oh crap, there goes our Sunday mornings for the next few years”...
Anyway – I was tipped off by my other half last night that I needed to wear sport shoes to training this week, for some un-specified “special activities”. Those “special activities” became obvious within minutes of rugby practice starting – the kids would form into their normal groups, the coaches would form a team, and the parents would form a team.
We were under strict instructions to play fair – you know; not pick children up with the ball, not bash them out of the way, and so on. On the whole it seemed to work well – except of course as each team arrived to play the parents, somebody had their offspring playing against them, and all rules flew out of the window like confetti.
Hopefully none of the children realised we were playing to keep the scores level. We repeatedly tried to highlight to the kids what they were doing – launching at us like a swarm of ants. Each time they did it, we flung the ball like a mortar across the field to the other wing, and waited for it to happen again. They never learned.
One Dad made the mistake of playing on the children's side, and met an ex-rugby player Dad half-way down the pitch. We were all laughing too much at the crunching tackle to continue playing for a few moments.
So that's it... no more rugby until September. There have been cold Sunday mornings when I had wished to be anywhere but the side of the pitch, but seeing Miss 9 develop has been wonderful. She has never cried off – never not wanted to go.
I wonder what we will do on Sunday mornings now ?!