When you sign up your small girl children for ballet classes, it's all a vision of pink tutus, satin pumps and velvet hair scrunchies. You hear Tchaikovsky and Delibes in your head as you fast-forward 20 years or so and imagine your daughters' perfect pirouettes, amazing arabesques and fabulous fouettés, their long, perfect limbs arched and elegant as they jeté, plié and glissade their way across a spotlit stage. You see yourself - a little older, admittedly - but well-preserved, seated in the best box in the theatre, lace handkerchief at the ready to dab the inevitable tears. You are, after all, the mother of all this elegance, writes Berna Cox
That is, of course, unless your girl children have different ideas about it all. The pink vision fades when every ballet day is a battle of wills with one who'd rather kick a ball around with the lads and another who refuses to remove the red wellies that are the favourite footwear of the moment.
The dream finally dies when they jointly tell you that enough's enough. No more ballet.
Twenty years on, I'm not in the theatre box in my finery, but on the sideline wearing a parka. The frilly tutus and satin pumps have become a navy blue rugby jersey and a pair of studded boots. My little ballerina plays No. 8 for Portlaoise WRFC. She's out there scrumming and rucking and mauling and shouting and roaring and absolutely loving it. I'm standing freezing on the sideline, praying that nobody gets hurt and that I don't make a holy show of her or myself with the umbrella. One rough tackle and I'm in there to protect my young.
I don't understand anything about the game. I don't know the rules - sorry, laws - and don't want them; and sometimes when I'm watching, I wonder if there actually are any. I can't understand why anyone would want to play rugby.
No 8's daddy played for his local club in his day and did a spell of under-age coaching. I stood on the sidelines then too, marvelling at the brutishness of it, the sheer silliness.
But rugby would appear to be my lot. And I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll at least have to learn the words. I've gone to most of the women's matches and I'm picking up the lingo. I'm not sure that I'm saying the right words at the right time, mind you, but I've progressed past calling the lineout the "jumpy-up thing". I'm calling a scrum a scrum instead of a "bums in the air thing"; and I know that "knock on" is another term though I'm not sure what it means. A Garryowen is a Garryowen and not a "big, mad, whooshy kick".
I must be quite an irritant to serious fans. When things start happening on the pitch my heart comes up into my throat. Is No 8 upright and moving? Is she limping? Those other girls are awfully rough. Is that allowed? The ball's gone over the bar - is that a point? Why isn't there a goalie? Are we winning? Can they not stay away from that mucky bit? They'll be ruined.
If I could manage to just think these things rather than say them out loud it might be better. I resist the powerful urge to run to her at half time with a baby-wipe and a hairbrush. I thank God she has a proper, bespoke gumshield and I pray that the second half passes quickly and without injury.
For anyone who thought women's rugby was cissy, I can tell you it ain't. It might be somewhat less full-on than men's - they are more gentlemanly in the scrums, for example - but it is just as fierce and furious for the participants. In the few months since the team formed, they've had a broken nose, a cracked cheekbone (which came with a spectacular black eye) and several broken fingers. These girls don't worry about breaking nails.
Where it differs significantly is in the après-match. Since the women took the field, there are hairdryers and hair-straighteners, make-up and moisturiser, towels and tweezers all over shower block. As the team troop in covered in Laois from head to toe, I'm thinking ahead to the laundry and wondering if bleach will take the colour out of the logo on the shorts. As the girls emerge, anything up to an hour later, it's hard to believe the transformation. They're all cleaned up and lovely again. Until the next time.
And I suppose I'll be there next time too. My vocabulary is improving (though my language isn't) and I might actually say something technically correct at some stage. I'm practising my "Are you blind, ref? That was a high tackle", and trying to inject authority into it.
My heart will always be in my throat as I scan the pitch looking for an upright and moving No. 8 and I will truly never understand her passion for such a brutish game. But I'm learning. I'm letting go. Tchaikovsky and Delibes have been replaced by "Go, baby, let the free bird fly". And sometimes, most times, when my daughter jumps up in the lineout it's almost, well, balletic.