I have discovered that I have failed as a parent – or at least as a rugby league loving parent.
My son, who is a successful musician, recently told me that he couldn’t now name a single rugby league player.
That is despite me having raised him in Wakefield and the fact that he now lives in Manchester, which is the city that houses the headquarters of the Rugby Football League.
He leads a busy life, which is dominated by music rather than sport, but he still finds time to travel and to indulge his love of marathon running, cycling and swimming.
And occasionally he has attended a Grand Final at Old Trafford and can easily get enthused about a game when he sees it happening in front of him.
But despite me telling him what a good team there is on his doorstep, Salford Red Devils’ home matches are not on his radar. And Salford are clearly still not on the radar of enough Manchester residents to come anywhere near close to filling their stadium, despite the brilliant rugby that they put in front of their fans every week.
Of course, not everyone inherits the interests of one or both of their parents.
For example, my wife is tone deaf and has no interest whatsoever in music (and very little in rugby league, for that matter), and yet my son has gone down that route.
He is one of life’s natural musicians, who can learn to play most instruments very quickly, although he specialises in the guitar.
When he was very young, I did my bit in trying to interest him in rugby league.
In particular, I still recall taking him to one well-known community club when he was about five years old so that he could try to pick up the rudiments of the game.
At that time, he used to love running around the garden and I could easily see his apparently limitless energy transferring to the wing and him scoring some spectacular tries.
We arrived at the club on the night that the kids of his age were training and we were welcomed warmly.
There were probably around 25 youngsters in his age group, both boys and girls, and the coaches organised them into little teams to undertake drills with a ball, so that they would get used to carrying it and passing it to their teammates.
To begin with, it was all going extremely well. He was joining in with the other kids and loving being out in the open air and mixing with his peers.
But then, disaster struck.
He didn’t understand what had to be done in relation to one particular drill and he left the ball behind him on the ground. He had to go back to pick it up in front of the other kids and a small group of girls who were in his team laughed at his mistake.
And that was that.
My offer to take him back the following week was met with a point-blank refusal. He wasn’t prepared to risk those girls laughing at him again.
About three years later I tried again, this time at another community club.
And it seemed to go well, probably because he was with a group of under-9 boys with the girls having a team of their own.
He loved the training, but as he was much less familiar with the game than the other boys, of whom there were about 20, so at weekends he would be on an extended substitutes’ bench, normally getting onto the pitch for the last five or ten minutes.
But then one day the team’s star hooker didn’t turn up for training and the coach told my son that in the next game he would start the game as the hooker. He came home brimming with anticipation and I spent the rest of the week teaching him as much as I knew about dummy-half play and the hooker’s role.
So the big day arrived and I took him to the clubhouse and wished him luck, although I did notice that the boy who was normally the first-choice hooker also entered the changing room.
And my worst fears were realised. As the teams came out, the regular lad was in the team and my son came out at the rear of the squad, clearly upset. He spent most of the game on the touchline and, to add insult to injury, it poured with rain.
And that was the end of a potentially glorious rugby league career. After that experience my son never went training again. The coach, by not fulfilling his promise, had killed his interest in the game.
So, what rugby league lost, music gained. My son eventually went to university and gained a first-class degree in musical production at the University of Salford. Since then, he and his band have played gigs in most parts of the UK and in many parts of Europe.
But the moral of the story is that if you’re rugby league coach, particularly of young kids, please ensure that you keep your promises to them.
Otherwise, you run the risk of destroying their interest in the game forever.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 486 (July 2023)
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