Rugby Family Quotes

Family isn’t always the one you’re born into. Sometimes it’s about people who get into your blood, inside your heart, and under your skin all on their own.

Don’t call your family ‘the fam’, Sean. It sounds douchey. Another two syllables won’t kill you,” I chided playfully. Sean’s smirk indicated he was enjoying my criticism, and I didn’t understand that, either. “This coming from the girl with hair like a packet of Skittles.” “My hair isn’t douchey,” I said, and flicked a few locks over my shoulder. “It brings joy to all those who gaze upon it.

On either side of them the essence of honky tonk beach resort had now enclosed them: gas stations, fried clam stands, Dairy Treets, motels painted in feverish pastel colors, mini golf. Larry was drawn two painful ways by these things. Part of him clamored at their sad and blatant ugliness and at the ugliness of the minds that had turned this section of a magnificent, savage coastline into one long highway amusement park for families in station wagons. But there was a more subtle, deeper part of him that whispered of the people who had filled these places and this road during other summers. Ladies in sunhats and shorts too tight for their large behinds. College boys in red and black striped rugby shirts. Girls in beach shifts and thong sandals. Small screaming children with ice cream spread over their faces. They were American people, and there was a kind of dirty, compelling romance about them whenever they were in groups never mind if the group was in an Aspen ski lodge or performing their prosaic/ arcane rites of summer along Route 1 in Maine. And now all these Americans were gone.

I bet the house in Islington didn’t hurt either, I didn’t say. The loaded dad. I don’t dare rib him about it—people get weird talking about money. But if there’s one thing Will has always liked, maybe even more than the ladies, it’s money. Maybe it’s a thing from childhood, never having quite as much as anyone else at our school. I get that. He was there because his dad was headmaster, while I got in on a sports scholarship. My family aren’t posh at all. I was spotted playing rugby at a school tournament in Croydon when I was eleven and they approached my dad. That sort of thing actually happened at Trevs: it was that important to them to field a good team.

He was a little monster,” Bob said, laughing, about Steve as a child. The main difficulty wasn’t unruly behavior. It was Steve’s insatiable curiosity about the bush and the wildlife in it. “For the first few months, when he was a baby, I could put Steve down and he would stay where I put him,” Lyn told me. “But after he started to get around on his own, it was all over. I would find him either on the roof or up in some tree.” When the family headed off on a trip, usually to North Queensland on wildlife jaunts, Steve could always be counted on to be elsewhere when they were ready to go. They would find him next to the nearest stream, snagging yabbies or turning over bits of wood to see what was hidden underneath. “He was never where we wanted him to be,” Lyn recalled with a laugh. Steve’s childhood was “family, wildlife, and sport,” he told me. He played rugby league for the Caloundra Sharks in high school and was picked to play rugby for the Queensland Schoolboys and represent the state, but he chose to go on a field trip with his dad to catch reptiles instead. Sometimes sport and wildlife mixed in unexpected ways. Both was an expert badminton player, and a preteen Steve decided to layout a badminton court in the family’s backyard one day. He had a brolga as a friend, a large bird that he called Brolly. Brolly objected to Steve rearranging her territory. She waited until his back was turned and then attacked. Wham! A brolga’s beak is a fearsome weapon, and Brolly’s slammed into the back of little Stevo’s head. His bird friend knocked him out cold. “Go ahead, feel it,” Steve said after regaling me with this story. He bent his head. I could still feel a knot of scar tissue, a souvenir of the brolga attack years earlier.

I shut my eyes and let myself drift back to Australia, the warm sun, the tropical nights, and the huge fruit bats flying across star-studded skies. Once again, the jangle of the phone jolted me upright. Not again! Now what did she want? Reluctantly I picked up the receiver. “G’day, mate,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “It’s Stevo calling from Australia. How you going?” Well, for starters, I was going without breathing for a few moments. “Good,” I stammered. Luckily, I didn’t have to talk, because Steve started right in on what was going on with the zoo. “The weather is heating up and the crocs will be laying soon,” he said, and I could barely hear him over the pounding of my heart. “I’ve got a chance to take a little time before summer hits,” he added. I waited for what seemed like a long beat, still breathless. “I’m coming to Oregon in ten days,” he said. “I’d really love to see you.” Yes! I was floored. Ten days. That would be…Thanksgiving. “Steve,” I said, “do you know about the American holiday of Thanksgiving?” “Too right,” he said cheerfully, but it was obvious that he didn’t. “We all get together as a family,” I explained. “We eat our brains out and take walks and watch a lot of football--American football, you know, gridiron, not your rugby league football.” I was babbling. “Do you want to come and share Thanksgiving with my family?” Steve didn’t seem to notice my fumbling tongue. “I’d be happy to,” he answered. “That’d be brilliant.” “Great,” I said. “Great,” he said. “Send me all the details, your flight and everything,” I said. “I will,” he promised. Then he hung up. As suddenly as he was there, he was gone. I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time that night, trying to convince myself that it hadn’t been a dream. Steve had called, and now he was coming to see me. This was going to be fabulous.

Ronan doesn’t have poor taste, he’s just prone to bad judgment. It’s a family trait, which explains why I’m sitting here with you right now.

There are three certainties in life, death, taxes, and the cold dread of attending another family gathering.

Being a working mother back then was to be a double-agent; you lied for a living. A male colleague who announced he was off to his son's rugby match was a hero; a women who did exactly the same was Lacking in Commitment... In the end, what made me quit EMF was the thought that my kids were suffering from the punishingly long - unnecessarily long, stupidly, inhumanely long - hours I spent away from them. They needed me, yes, but it turned out I needed them too. And our family was running on empty and the only person who could fill that emptiness was me. ... Winter. It must have been because all the commuting fathers, who had come straight from the station, were hurrying in with their thick dark coats and their briefcases. Each man stopped to ask me where they might find their child's classroom, They knew the name if their kid - he, credit where it's due! - but generally, that was the limit of their knowledge. They didn't know who the child's teacher was, sometimes didn't know what year group they were in. They had no clue where the little coats and bags were hung up, or what was in those bags. And I stood there in that cold, dark playground thinking, how could this ever possibly be fair? How could a woman compete when men were allowed to be so oblivious? One parent not knowing who the teacher was, not knowing what went in the lunchbox, not knowing which child in the class had the nut allergy, not knowing where the PE bag was, or which stinky little socks needed washing. OK, one parent could be oblivious. But not two. One parent has to carry the puzzle of family life in their head, and mostly, let's face it, it's still the mum. Professionally, back then I was competing with men whose minds were clear of all the stuff that small children bring.