Sport. Whether you participate in sport or just enjoy drinking a pint and watching sport (amen), sport is something that has always been able to bring people together. To create a sense of community. A sense of belonging.
From having a kick-about with the other children in your neighborhood, to supporting your football club every weekend, to painting your face in your countries colours for the World Cup (I’m still waiting to tear the cellophane off my blue and white paint…), there is nothing that can unite people more in the world than sport. Which was why, as I finally felt like I was beginning to get on top of things with work – I only had 73 year reports left to write on children I hardly knew, not that I was counting – I was ready to return back to my sporting love: netball.
Now, if you are a female, the word netball will perhaps conjure up fond childhood memories of wearing plaited dresses and bibs far too big for you as you scream for the ball, surrounded by other screaming girls. However, if you are a man, the word netball will most likely conjure up this one thought that I have rolled my eyes at several times throughout my life: ‘is that the sport that isn’t a real sport but is like a mix between basketball and volleyball?’ And to those men I say, netball IS a real sport. As real as the feeling of pain in your balls when I kick them if you ever ask me that question again…
Anyway, with that off my chest, back to netball. Having been out of the sport on a competitive level for several years due to injury (cry), I was excited about my return to the court. Excited to return to the game that I loved; excited to (hopefully) make new friends outside of work and excited to put a stop to the ‘Dubai stone’ claiming another victim – I spent too much money on all my new Dubai clothes, you cannot have them!!
However, at the same time, I was also anxious. Anxious that I wouldn’t be up to the standard of the other girls playing; anxious that my old ACL injury would take me permanently out this time and anxious that I would be shunned.
As a new player joining near the end of the season the possibility of being shunned was definitely a lot higher than the possibility of being accepted. I had missed the beginning of the year trials. I had missed three quarters of the competitive games. And, I had missed the social nights out that are always the defining moments for any sports team. It is where you realise that your team can achieve anything together from the fact that you all didn’t end up in jail from nudist antics at the weekend…Just my old netball team?
But, I still believed that all was not lost.
As the team I had chosen to join wasn’t just any random netball team. No, no, no. This was a team where I had an insider connection. In the same way that knowing the DJ playing in the nightclub grants you queue skip and free entry, I was hoping that my ties with one of this netball clubs first team players – Miss Defence 2021 herself – would have similar benefits.
That and I had been practicing my birds of paradise dance, complete with full feather outfit ensemble, which I was sure would also help to clinch me my much desired spot on the team. I just had to make sure to pop my feathers at exactly the right time…
So, as I turned up to the Exiles Netball Club training with Miss Defence 2021, my whole body vibrated with both excited and anxious energy – and possibly from the fact my atoms were quickly turning from solids into liquids with training being outside (help, Scottish person in danger!).
However, suddenly a realisation came to me. The realisation that this wasn’t like joining a normal netball team at home. This was an expat team. A team of nomads. A team where it was probably normal for random individuals to join throughout the year and a team that understood what it is like to be new; to be seeking acceptance.
And with this realisation, my anxieties quickly took a back seat to my excitement as the familiar chatter of women catching up on their weekend antics reached my ears. It was this familiar chatter, this familiar pre-training conversation that happens at all sports training that also helped to put me at ease.
You see, getting back into competitive sports is like riding a bike – and it is especially like this if your competitive sport is riding a bike. While the drills you do may change each week, the actual training outline itself doesn’t. Chatter, train hard with intermittent moments of chatter and then end by chattering some more.
Therefore, as the chatter reached my ears, I felt myself relaxing back into this familiarity. I even attempted to join in in a couple of conversations, where I most likely laughed to loud and spoke too Scottish too fast – the only non-Scottish person who can understand us when we reach this point is Usain Bolt – but it didn’t matter! As everyone smiled warmly and nodded at my incoherent nonsense; a response I’ve grown used to over the years as a teacher.
But, there was one language that we all understood and that was netball!
With chatter time up, it was now time to actually do what we had all dragged our hungover asses there to do in the first place and that was play netball. And yes, while I am an alcoholic and don’t like to limit drinking to one day of the week, my big drinking is usually a Saturday which means you have guessed right, training is on a Sunday. However, what else would we be really doing on a Sunday anyway apart from wallowing in self-pity?
So, with my brace strapped so tight around my knee that the circulation being cut off was a serious possibility, I took to the court to join in in my first Exiles training session. My first, but certainly not my last.
While I was a little rusty with my passing and definitely not up to the standard of many of the other players there, I felt like I had communicated enough from the training session that I was someone that took the sport seriously. However, that was also the beauty with this team and many of the other netball teams in Dubai (of which there are MANY). Playing at a social level as opposed to a competitive level was also an option that I could have taken. But, for me, my fiery Scottish blood needed the competition. It needed to be tearing hair and spitting in peoples’ faces…wrong sport?
With the training now done, I felt an overwhelming feeling of happiness that only comes from participating in sports.
Happiness at having survived the training (and the heat). Happiness at returning to the sport I loved. And happiness from the feeling of welcome I had received from all the current members of the team.
Therefore, even before the coach came over to invite me to play in the squad, I already knew that I had been accepted. That these girls, my future teammates and squad had let me into their Dubai family.
And, just like that, so began another aspect of my Dubai journey; with another piece of my Dubai jigsaw slotted into place making me feel, once again, at home.
