Musings From The Shitter Volume Fifteen

Not Trying, becoming

They’d played this team before. Same ground. Same colours. Same rhythms in the crowd. That time, they lost 3–0—hard and clean. You could see it in the shape of the game, in the weight of each pass, in how little they believed the match was theirs to shape.

This weekend, it ended 1–1. Against the top team. A draw on paper, but something heavier in the air.

They weren’t just playing differently—they were different.

The younger players especially—no longer just shadows or placeholders. They carried something with them now. Not just skill, but a kind of stubborn heart. Not waiting to be useful—being useful. Each movement said, “I’m here. I’m part of this.”

About 25 minutes in, one of them came off for a quick sub. On the surface, routine. But she walked over, and I noticed something—quiet tears, the kind that don’t shout but settle heavy. That’s what caught my attention.

In the quiet between the chaos, she told me something. Not a sob or a cry. Just words.

Someone she knew from school had died the night before.

I was the first person she’d told.

We spoke then—not about grief, but about football. About how the game holds you tight even when everything else is falling apart. How sometimes, playing is the only thing you can do to stay afloat. To carry the weight without breaking.

Around her, the team was there—quiet, steady, patient. Not crowding or rushing, but holding space. Like they understood that some battles aren’t fought with shouts, but with presence. With simply showing up.

She went back out and played the best game I’ve seen her play.

Later, we talked again. About how some things are bigger than the game. But still, the game drags us back in. Because life doesn’t pause for loss. It doesn’t care about your hurt. It demands you show up, keep moving, keep bleeding.

Around her, the older players had changed too. The barking was gone, replaced by patience—the kind you get after weeks of shouting into the void. Now they trusted the young ones to hold the line. They trusted the team to carry itself.

And it did.

The game unfolded with a kind of hard-earned composure. Not pretty. Not perfect. But real. Thoughtful. Like a body learning to move through pain instead of against it. A rhythm that wasn’t forced but born out of survival.

Something has shifted.

You don’t always see it when it’s happening. But sometimes, in the middle of a match, in the middle of a life that won’t quit weighing you down, someone shares a truth. And you feel it—in how they move after, in how the team folds into itself, in how the game becomes something more.

They’re not trying to be a team anymore. They are one.

And beneath all the tactics and the scoreboard, beneath the bruises and the noise, something else is going on: people, becoming themselves. Becoming each other’s. Carrying what they must. And stubbornly, fiercely, choosing to keep going.

And in this... team... is my daughter. Same school. Same age as the child who passed away.

I’ve been caught in that thought, restless and unsure. Not quite knowing what to do with it. But then I catch myself knowing—the team has her.

Whatever happens, this team has her.

And, strangely, I feel like they have me as well.