I know, I know, it’s “exorcise” not “exercise”. No need to correct me. It’s just a reference to the Aussie Rules football team I joined in Dublin many years ago called “The Dublin Demons”. That was possibly the beginning of my journey with Joyner, or at least planted some seeds.
“You play any football?” a Kerryman sitting behind me asked when I joined the Dublin office. Answering “yes” was followed by an invitation to a training session with his Aussie Rules team the following week. I had never played the sport, but afterwards continued to play with them for a year or two. As the years went by, I found myself either asking or being asked that same question again and again in slightly different contexts. “You play any rugby?” or “Any interest in some midweek basketball?” or “We’re down a player this evening if you could fill in?”. The thing that always struck me was how reliant on chance the whole thing was. It was the Kerryman sitting behind me. It was a housemate who played some 5-a-side. It was a friend of a friend of a friend who needed a basketball player. Surely, there was a better way.
What if I didn’t know these people? Or they had never asked? Or what if I didn’t even know what I was looking for?
Love Story For The Ages
Years later I moved to the great city of Toronto, Canada. Again, I was lucky enough to meet some expats who invited me along to play something called Touch Rugby. I started to love it. I would have never thought and would have never gone looking for it. Even if I had, they had only a poorly maintained Facebook page with little detail. But I found them, again, by chance.
So where’s the problem you ask? Man finds sport, falls in love and lives happily ever after? The serendipity just adds to the fairytale.
Well, it wasn’t always a fairytale. There were the dry spells in between (yes, squeezing the last drop out of this romance analogy). There were the periods I wanted to do something but didn’t know where to look or who to ask. But mainly, there were those periods of apathy where I just needed someone to invite me along to try something new, but there wasn’t always a friendly Kerryman sitting behind me.
Somebody call me a taxi
These days I’m back in Dublin involved in Touch Rugby at Old Belvedere RFC and the Irish Touch Rugby international squads. The the battle continues. I have found my calling, but the sport here yearns for greater visibility. Our club searches continually for new players and Irish squads pick up players in unlikely places who all say “I just found out about this. I wish I had known sooner”.
Sports will always compete for players, that’s a given. But this is different. It’s not like two taxis fighting for a customer. It’s more like many taxis searching while customers wander aimlessly looking for a lift on the next street. When they finally find one another, they think “I wish I had known sooner”.
Swipe Right
Uber has put an end to people wandering aimlessly in the rain. Tinder opens up the world of dating beyond your friend’s sister or that cute boy who serves coffee at the local starbucks on Tuesdays. Netflix means you can watch all the movies without queueing at the video store.
And Joyner? Where does that fit in?
Well, my dream is that someday, Joyner will simply make it easier to tap that someone on the shoulder and ask them kindly “You play any football?”.