by Guy Fender
They started drifting past me before I realised I was paying attention. Red balloons, heart-shaped but slightly uneven, like they’d been made quickly and without much care. They floated across the field in no real pattern, strings trailing, catching the light when the clouds thinned. I stood still in my match jersey, boots damp from the grass, and watched them move on without slowing down.
This was not how I thought this season would feel.
The benches sit just behind the fields. You can hear them before you see them, whistles, shouting, studs on hard ground. I’d spent most of my life measuring time in training sessions and matches, winters and pre-seasons. The smell of cut grass and mud usually meant purpose. That afternoon it just felt like background noise, like a song from a room next door.
I was still wearing my match jersey. The old one, not the new issue. The logo was peeling slightly at the sleeve. I hadn’t meant to put it on. Muscle memory, I guess. You reach for what you’ve always reached for, even when it doesn’t fit the situation anymore.
Earlier that day, I’d been called into a small office that smelled like sweat and instant coffee. No drama. No shouting. Just careful words and long pauses. The coach kept saying things like development and depth and not a reflection of effort… I nodded at the right moments. I’ve always been good at that.
“Keep working,” he said at the end, like work was the problem.
I said, “Yeah. Of course.”
People think being dropped feels like a punch. It doesn’t. It feels like someone gently closing a door while you’re still talking.
So I walked. Past the fields, past the school block, anywhere that didn’t ask me to react properly yet. I wasn’t ready to face the reality yet. The ground was soft from rain earlier, and my boots picked up mud I didn’t bother wiping off. A group of kids ran past me, laughing, chasing one another without rules or teams or selectors. I envied how careless their movement was.
A balloon dipped low as it passed, its string brushing my arm. I flinched, then laughed quietly at myself. I don’t know why balloons bothered me that day. Maybe because they float. Maybe because they look like celebration even when nothing’s been earned. I didn’t have anything to celebrate, maybe that’s why.
One of the teachers walking his dog slowed near me. He nodded at my jersey.
“Game day?” he asked.
“Not today sir,” I said.
He smiled politely, like that answer made sense, and carried on. I wondered how many times I’d asked that same question without thinking. How many people I’d nodded at without noticing the gap between what they wore and what they’d lost.
I sat on a bench that was still cold and a bit wet. The kind of bench you don’t sit on unless you really mean to stop. From where I sat, I could see the corner of the main field through the trees. Training had started. Lines running. Shouts. The sharp sound of contact.
One balloon snagged briefly on a branch, wobbling, struggling, then freeing itself and lifting higher. I watched it go and felt something loosen in my chest. Not relief. Not anger. Just the quiet acknowledgement of something ending without ceremony.
A boy came over, maybe ten or eleven, scanning the ground.
“You seen a red one?” he asked me.
“Just missed it,” I said.
He sighed dramatically. “They always get away.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They do.”
He ran off again, hope already redirected somewhere else.
I stayed longer than I should have. Long enough for the noise from the field to fade into something dull. Long enough to admit that rugby hadn’t just been something I did. It had been a way of not asking other questions. About who I was without it. About what happens when effort isn’t enough.
When I stood up, my legs felt heavy, like they always did after a hard session. The habit of it made me smile, just slightly.
I didn’t take the jersey off. I zipped up my jacket over it and walked home, mud drying on my boots, balloons long gone. I wasn’t done. I wasn’t finished. I just wasn’t where I thought I’d be.
And for the first time, that felt like something I might be able to carry.