Dear Gilbert
Questions, dilemmas and occasional rugby-related chaos
Gilbert reads every letter — probably.
The letters. The advice. Make of it what you will.
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I'm thinking about qualifying as a referee once I stop playing, but I've seen what some refs put up with — shouting, abuse, parents on the touchline. I love the game and want to stay involved, but I'm not sure I can handle being the person everyone's angry at every week.
Dear Future Whistle.
Good. That hesitation means you understand what you're signing up for, which puts you ahead of most people currently shouting at referees.
Here's what nobody tells you: the abuse says almost nothing about you and everything about the shouter. You'll make the right call and get screamed at anyway, because someone needed somewhere to put their frustration and you were standing there holding a whistle.
The players who actually respect referees — and there are more of them than the shouting suggests — will tell you plainly when you've had a good game. Hold onto that. It matters more than the noise.
Every referee working women's rugby right now was once exactly where you are, wondering if they could handle it.
— Gilbert -
I've done the kit wash four weekends running. Nobody else has volunteered, nobody's replaced me, and when I mentioned it in the group chat I got two thumbs-up emojis and silence. Do I keep doing it forever now?
Dear Volunteer By Default.
Yes.
That's how it works.
You did it once, competently, without complaining, and the squad's collective memory quietly filed you under "kit person" — permanently, no appeals process.
Every club has one. The kit person, the minibus person, the one who always has strapping tape. Nobody appoints them. They just make one competent decision early in their career and never recover from it.
The good news: this is a form of power. You control access to clean shorts. Use it wisely.
The bad news: the only way out is finding someone even more competent than you, handing it over mid-sentence, and immediately leaving the room.
— Gilbert -
I’ve somehow become the person who organises everything at our club. Fixtures, WhatsApp groups, teas, volunteers, fundraising, Christmas raffle, end-of-season awards… every year I say I’ll do less and every year somebody asks if I can “just sort one more thing”. I love the club, but I’m exhausted. Am I allowed to say no?
Dear Indispensable
Yes.In fact, you probably should.
Rugby clubs have a remarkable ability to mistake reliability for availability.
The first time you help, you’re appreciated.
The tenth time, you’re expected.
The hundredth time, people assume you were born holding a clipboard.
Here’s the thing.
If your club genuinely can’t function without one volunteer doing twelve jobs…
…the problem isn’t you.
It’s the system.
Say no occasionally.
Not because you care less.
Because you want to care for longer.
The game needs volunteers.
It also needs them to come back next season.
— Gilbert
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Dear Gilbert,
Every week before kick-off, the same girl commandeers the changing room speaker and plays the exact same three songs, in the exact same order, at a volume that suggests she's personally trying to summon a war god. When challenged, she says it's "the ritual" and cannot be reasoned with. We have tried democracy. We have tried sabotage. Last week someone hid the speaker and she produced a second, backup speaker from her kit bag like some kind of unhinged Bond villain. How do I stage a coup?
— Sick of "Freed From Desire" Before I've Even Strapped My Boots
Gilbert says:
You don't stage a coup. You've clearly already tried, and she came prepared with a contingency speaker, which tells you everything about the seriousness of what you're up against. This is not a woman who leaves things to chance. This is a woman with a laminated warm-up routine.
Here is the thing you're missing: it isn't really about the songs. Nobody on earth needs to hear the same three-track playlist fifty-two Saturdays a year and still feel something. But rituals aren't there to be good — they're there to be reliable. In a sport where your studs might snap in the mud, the ref might be having a personal crisis, and Sharon might have forgotten the corner flags again, "the same three songs, in the same order, too loud" is the one constant in the universe. You are not fighting a playlist. You are fighting the closest thing your team has to religion.
My advice: stop trying to remove the ritual and start trying to own a corner of it. Ask to pick track two. Not track one — that's hers, don't touch it, you'll start a war you can't win — but track two is negotiable territory if you frame it as tribute rather than rebellion. Within a season you'll have co-opted the whole thing and be the one arriving early with your own backup speaker.
Alternatively: earplugs, and make peace with the fact that "Freed From Desire" is now permanently, tragically, associated with slightly muddy shin pads. This happens to everyone. There is no cure.
Yours, humming it against his will right now,
Gilbert.
“Got a problem you think I can’t handle? You can write to me below”