Anonymous 15 - The Committee

Anonymous 15 has been on the committee.

She will not be going back.

Not after what she saw.

Column No. 2

Every rugby club has a committee .Somebody elected them years ago. Nobody has seen that person since..


Nobody remembers agreeing to this. They simply appeared, like a mysterious smell in the changing room

that everyone pretends isn't there until one day you find the source and wish you hadn't.

The committee meets on the third Thursday of the month in the back room of a pub whose only qualification is that the chair's brother-in-law owns it.

There are eight people on the committee.

Four of them do everything.

Two of them are there to make sure the first four don't get too much credit for doing everything.

One of them has been "stepping back for personal reasons" since 2021 but still votes on everything and once sent a seventeen-message voice note to the group chat at 1am about the colour of the away kit.

And one of them — and I want you to understand this is a real person at a real club and she knows who she is — one of them has not done a single visible thing in three years but somehow gets a special mention in every end-of-season speech, described as "the backbone of this club," while the people who actually keep the lights on stand at the back with their wine and smile like they've been doing it their whole lives.

Which they have.

“They simply appeared, like a mysterious smell in the changing room”

Then there's Kryssi.

With a K. She'll tell you.

Why does Kryssi do it?

This is a question I have spent considerable time on.

Option A: Kryssi genuinely loves this club. She loves the players, the culture, the mud, the chaos, the 6am pitch inspections in November, the kit that arrives in the wrong sizes, the county meetings that could have been an email, the AGM that could have been nothing. She loves all of it. She is, in the purest sense, a person for whom rugby is not something she does but something she is.

This is possible.

Option B: Kryssi cannot say no. Not to anyone. Not about anything. She once agreed to cover three training sessions, organise the tour, write the match reports AND manage the new player enquiries in the same week because someone asked her in a car park and she didn't know how to get out of it. She has the word "no" somewhere in her vocabulary but it has never been located under operational conditions.

This is also possible.

Option C: The 2022 end-of-season awards.

I'm not going to tell you everything that happened at the 2022 end-of-season awards.

What I will tell you is this.

There was a chairlift. There was a speech. There was a person who shall remain nameless who made a toast that will never, under any circumstances, appear in the minutes. There was an incident involving the club president, a novelty trophy and the fire door that I have been asked by multiple parties never to speak of again.

And Kryssi was there for all of it.

Kryssi remembers all of it.

And somehow, the following January, Kryssi ended up with the keys.

Draw your own conclusions.

The committee recently held a volunteer recruitment drive.

They made a poster. It had a motivational font and a photograph of the first team from 2021, which is a bold choice given that two of the players in it have since left under circumstances nobody will discuss at volume and one of them is now playing for a rival club that beat us in the cup and celebrated in a manner I still find personally offensive.

The poster said: Get Involved. Shape The Future.

Six people responded.

One wanted to know if there was a discount on match fees.

One asked to be put in charge of social media because she had ideas. She was given social media. She posted twice and then went quiet. The last post is still pinned. It is a picture of a rugby ball with the caption "Big things coming 👀". That was fourteen months ago.

One turned out to already be on the committee and had missed the email because she'd muted the group chat and hadn't told anyone.

One came to the first meeting, said "wow, there's a lot going on isn't there" and was never seen again.

One joined with genuine enthusiasm, rewrote the entire volunteer onboarding process, created a shared drive, colour-coded the fixture responsibilities and sent a twelve-point improvement plan to the committee. The committee said they'd look at it. That was eight months ago. The shared drive has not been opened since March. Nobody remembers the password.

And one — and I say this as someone who was in the room — one person looked at the agenda, looked at the faces around the table, looked at the seventeen-item AOB list at 9:45pm on a Thursday, and said, very quietly: "I think I've made a mistake."

She had.

We all had

Here is what nobody tells you about the committee.

The committee knows everything.

Not the official everything. The other everything.

Who's been asked to leave a rival club and why. Which coach is thinking about walking. Which player has been having the same "conversation" with the same selector for three seasons running. Which sponsor is about to pull out. Which official complaint is sitting in someone's inbox that hasn't been actioned because the person who needs to action it is the person it's about.

The committee knows.

Kryssi especially knows.

Kryssi with a K.

And every year at the awards dinner, Kryssi stands up, gives a little speech about what a privilege it is, how much the club means to her, how she'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

And every year, I watch the faces of the people who know about the chairlift, and the toast, and the incident with the fire door.

And every single one of them is smiling.

Volunteer for your club.

Genuinely. It matters. They need you.

But maybe — and I say this as someone with direct experience — maybe read the room first.

And if Kryssi offers you a key?

Don't take it

Anonymous 15.

Some details have been changed to protect the innocent. And the committee.