Frustraitions.

I have just come home from the rugby club event of the year which was the first Chesham Sports Festival. As an event it was very well executed. It seemed to me that all the people who were involved in it enjoyed it and the range of sports on show benefited the rugby club in building some partnerships. There are some aspects that I am sure the organisers would change but all of them minor and just with regards to space available. I don’t think it can be denied that this 1st outing was a great success.


This leads to the reality of small clubs and raising their profiles and the work involved. At this event we managed to attract a Sky sports team and the England Women’s Legend Maggie Alphonsi. Now to put that into perspective it is a bit like getting Lawrence Dallaglio to attend a week after the England team played a world cup final. The major disappointment was the lack of women at the event. If I had the chance to meet one of rugby’s real heroes, I don’t think there is much aside from family weddings or funerals that would have kept me away. For a club like Chesham whose women’s team face major hurdles this year to even field a side this was without doubt a major disappointment. I did get a chance to speak to Maggie (I can call her that now) about the situation in the women’s game and she was actually quite candid in her view which was that the women’s game faces some huge hurdles. Like anything at the lowest levels of sport. To even get the basics right involves a lot of sacrifices and usually from the same very few people.

To put on an event like the Sports festival involves an incredible amount of work, this work is usually carried out by the same people, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Before a ball is kicked each season the club needs to find somewhere in the region of £20,000. That’s probably a conservative estimate. As someone that has fulfilled a couple of these minor rolls behind the scenes, as a second team captain and a coach of the women’s section. Involving yourself in the committee is a bit like being the first man over the top during the First World War. Chances are you are going to end up dead and the people behind you will be running right over your corpse. You won’t get any thanks and 95% of the people who you commit your time too will either not have a clue what is involved or simply won’t care. They will have no qualms about complaining about what is wrong but will put very little effort into helping put it right. This is the dilemma facing small clubs. When do you say enough is enough? If you have a team and more than 50% of its players don’t care if it fails, do you say at some point we can’t do any more? If you provide that team with an international standard coach and match day assistance and still many of its players and members don’t feel they want to be involved. You have to make some tough decisions based on what more you can do.

I said earlier in the piece rugby clubs and teams survive because of a handful of people who are willing to make huge personal sacrifice. To just simply keep things ticking over is an effort; more than that, it is relentless and time consuming. In life as well as sport there are those who do and those who don’t. This is thanks to those who do.