Musings from the Shitter: Volume Twenty Six 

A Season’s End, Prize Giving, and the Slow Burn of Belonging

Here we are, the last Saturday of the season…that strange, bittersweet limbo where time feels like it’s dragging a half-burnt cigarette through last night’s regret. You try to savour every smoky second, but it vanishes like your last shred of dignity after a mid-game slide tackle that was about as graceful as a drunken giraffe on roller skates.

That day unfolds like one long, reluctant exhale…a slow-motion montage where each tick of the clock carries the weight of endings awkwardly tangled with beginnings nobody asked for. It’s the day when the club…this sweaty, chaotic, semi-unruly organism made up of players, managers, referees, and a horde of obsessives who believe memorising the offside rule makes them philosophers…gathers to dump its shattered memories onto a table, trying to convince itself it all makes sense. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. What a glorious mess. Like a playlist shuffled by a sleep-deprived DJ with a vendetta against coherence.

Prize Giving: The Awkward, Beautiful Ritual

Prize giving feels like a communal mourning session…but with trophies, polite applause that’s equal parts sincere and tired, and speeches trying to make sense of the chaos without pretending it’s anything but messy. It’s the day when “slow” mornings, existential dread, and the never-ending group chat wars over who “really deserved to start” finally get shaped into something resembling meaning. Like an awkward sculpture made from leftover pizza crusts and shattered hopes.

We humans need stories with beginnings, middles, and ends…even when the real story is a slow-motion parade of small kindnesses, grudges aged in cheap beer, and the stubborn ritual of showing up on time (or close enough). That invisible framework…the sticky, gross glue of shared experience…is what turns a club into a home.

Prize giving tries, with the earnestness of a half-asleep physics dabbler mumbling about string theory at 3 a.m. in a car park, to catch something that can never fully be held. And sometimes, the award lands like a secret message…a sudden, sharp jab of recognition just when you’re doubting if you belong at all. The kind of moment that sneaks up, uninvited, and says: We see you.

Maybe that’s the quiet magic here…the real prize beneath the polished trophies and forced applause. Because, messy and imperfect, you’re part of this ragtag tribe.

The Club: Culture, Family, and That Unexplainable Thing

What is this club, really? It’s not just a team. It’s a slow-cooked stew of grudges, friendships, and shared pain, seasoned with inside jokes that would confuse a linguist and scars that don’t heal but turn into badges of honour. It’s a dysfunctional family reunion you didn’t RSVP to but can’t escape, where everyone shows up looking a little worse for wear, smelling faintly of defeat and sweat, but somehow glad to be counted among the wreckage.

You don’t join this club… you get absorbed by it, like a bad tattoo or a hangover you thought you’d outgrown but keeps coming back. The culture is visible only in those tiny moments between moments — the resigned sigh after a baffling referee call, the half-laugh at the late arrival blaming traffic, the silent nod after a game that felt less like football and more like a suburban street fight. It’s also in the bucket of water the day after an event, mopping the floor while the noise dies down and the mess still smells fresh. That’s where the club really lives — in the quiet, unseen labour, in the moments of care and ritual that stitch everyone together.

This messy heartbeat of belonging is what keeps the chaos alive long after the final whistle blows. No trophy can hold that truth, but prize giving fucking tries…with the desperate earnestness of a drunk philosopher attempting to solve the universe with a wristwatch and a pocketful of regrets.

The Subs Coordinator’s Tale: Leadership in the Midst of Chaos

And then there’s me…the self-appointed Substitute Coordinator. A polite way of saying “the guy who pretends to know what’s going on while secretly hoping no one asks him to actually do anything.” Because “coach” sounds way too official, and I’m socially awkward enough to make a mime look like a social butterfly.

Somehow, though, this chaotic, wildly imperfect band of women…the Feilding Women’s Socials…became my patch of belonging in a year when certainty was more elusive than a calm referee and the promise of messy Sunday afternoons was the only thing that didn’t lie. Coordinating subs is basically the adult version of trying to keep track of who’s still conscious at a family dinner where the wine’s flowing and secrets are spilling.

Receiving Recognition: The Awkward Ballet of Being Seen

Then comes the moment…under a spotlight brighter than your future prospects, clutching an award that feels less like a trophy and more like a mirror reflecting the tangled, awkward, infuriating truth of yourself.

Recognition is weird. It’s like a friend pulling back the curtain to reveal the chaos behind the magic trick…except the trick is, you barely know what you’re doing, and the chaos is the only thing holding it together. It forces you to face that people see not just the surface but the messy, tangled, unfiltered truth beneath…the parts you hide even from yourself.

It’s like sitting down for dinner and realising everyone knows you hate kale, but they keep serving it because “it’s good for you,” and you smile and nod like the grown-up you pretend to be.

Sometimes, that recognition hits you when you least expect it…mid-crisis, questioning if you really belong here or if you’re just some imposter hanging on by fingernails and bad decisions. Then, boom. The club says: We see you. And in that moment, the award isn’t just metal or plastic…it’s a lifeline.

The Bigger Picture: More Than Just a Game

So what is prize giving, really? It’s not an end. It’s a collective exhale, a flickering candle in the dark that says: We are here, together, and we refuse to let go.

This club…this gloriously flawed, ragged, beautiful mess…is a home built on sweat, scraped knees, last-minute subs, and stories that spiral long after the lights dim. It’s a place where “real” beats “perfect” every damn time, where loyalty isn’t measured by wins but by the stubborn refusal to quit on each other, even when it would be way easier to just call in sick and binge-watch something with fewer injuries.

Also, it’s the only place where showing up half-dressed still counts as dedication.

Why Football Clubs Are Never Just About Football

Football clubs aren’t just teams. They’re bizarre, vital ecosystems where identity, belonging, and community wriggle and writhe like some beautiful, ugly beast…half-wild, half-tamed, and utterly necessary.

They’re where we dump our hopes, frustrations, and occasionally our dignity, and find out who we really are…not despite the game, but because of it.

Prize giving? It’s an awkward, sometimes painful ritual that says: You matter. We see you.

Beneath the chaos, sweat, and bruises is a stubborn, desperate human truth…a need to connect, to belong, to be witnessed.

And if that doesn’t sound like life itself, then what the hell does?