I’ve been playing rugby for three and a half seasons now, for two different teams. In England, there aren’t many girls teams for under 12’s so I played with my local boys team until I was 12. When I became an under 13, I moved to play with Worcester U14s girls team, and I found the atmosphere quite different. When you play with the boys, they tend to block you out a bit, at least until you dump tackle them again to get their attention, but with a girls team, it’s all a bit more comical.

At the start of this season, the first official season of the under 14’s, we started off with 5 players who played u16’s the previous season. Myself, Rhiannon, Alyssa, Ghostie and Stacey. We couldn’t wait for the start of the season and we were really up for annoying the coaches. When the season officially started, 3 more players joined the ranks, Eliza from Bromsgrove boys, Dayle from Kidderminster boys and Nic, who is our head-coach’s daughter. OK, that’s 8 players and we were ready to enter our first 6 a side game against Burton! During the coming months, we grew and grew, and the more of us that were there, it seems, the more we annoyed the coaches!

We had four coaches in all, Keith, Steve, Rich and Amanda. It was quite funny as we always used to treat each coach differently for their different personalities. Keith was our head coach and he was the one that always used to do the before-game speech. He was always good for getting us ready for a game but sometimes our concentration would wander…..slightly.

Steve, on the other hand, was our manager. He was someone you never used to mess with; we were all scared of Steve. Everyone got on well with him but during training and stuff it was always fun to be pretend scared of Steve and do whatever he said. We weren’t really scared of him………honest!

Amanda was the forwards coach along with Rich. She played prop herself but due to injuries she had to stop. What gets me is that she chose to spend her time not playing rugby coaching us mugs! She was always nice to talk to and I kinda owe her a lot for what she did for me on the day I broke my wrist.

And now we get to Richard. He had many names:

 Richard
 Little Richard
 Rich
 Little Rich! (Repetitive I know!)
 Beckham
 Little Dicky (My personal favourite!)
 And just plain Dicky.

As you may have guessed from his nicknames, he was quite short. He also played hooker in his….ahem…younger days. We all used to take the mickey out of little Dicky and he took it well. He was always a lot of fun and him and his faith suit (don’t ask!) will be joining most of us in the under 17’s next season!

Beth O’Brien

Thanks to the Worcester under 14’s for a great season.

Click here to visit Beth's web site!