Family Matters - By Jude Dobson

I am about to become a rugby mum. I am, possibly, the least rugby-type mum I know, so it will be an education. Even though I grew up with three older brothers, the national game didn't really feature in our household, as the boys were into other sporting pursuits. So here I am a few decades down the track still with naff-all knowledge of the game, but about to spend a lot of Saturday mornings watching it. One might have thought that as an adult I would have absorbed more, but no. When I started in telly back in 1989 I soon found I needed an agent to help field requests to appear at anything from a charity day in Pahiatua to slick pitches from Auckland ad agencies to the new, young, prime-time girl. I went and saw Andy Haden who had newly expanded his Sporting Contacts agency to represent a few non-sporting folk. The most famous non-sporting person, who had just joined the ranks of the sporting elite on the books, was Rachel Hunter, soon then to marry Rod Stewart, so I figured I was in good company. Over almost 20 years I've often had to ask Andy the most basic of questions about the national game to save face at functions at which it might come into conversation, or indeed need to be referred to by my good self in an MC capacity. Once, at an event where there were players who played some sort of rugby, union or league, then, to confuse me even more, Aussie rules guys (ahh!). I simply made a mental note that the league players wore shirts with a V in the front, the Aussie fella wore a rude-looking uniform (most unbecoming to a sportsman, I thought) and the union guys were the rest. Got me through. So Andy and I laughed a couple of months back when I asked him who to contact to sign up for the Small Blacks rugby for 8-years-olds. I mused that rugby might have missed me, but it's certainly got to me through the next generation. I had already been in touch with Andy about my Blues fan. Our 11-year-old, that is, a Blues nut. She goes to Eden Park with her dad all kitted up to cheer on her favourite team and now, with the newly converted 8-year-old in tow, they watch all the big matches on the box yelling, ''Try! try!'' For the big matches dad has even been known to set up a grandstand for them in the lounge so the kids and their mates could watch from up high while the adults had an undisturbed view of the telly at ground level. It wasn't that surprising, then, that a few weeks after the soccer sign-up in February the request came from the young fella to change codes. (I wonder why rugby is later to sign up than soccer? Or rather, I wonder why soccer is earlier to sign up than rugby? So rugby it is. After a visit to a sports shop and with the help of a lovely older guy who's helped kit out many a young lad for the season, we are all ready to go. The mouthguard was the most popular buy. I was intrigued that one could talk, spit and breathe through it. ''Just like Dan Carter does,'' my son told me, so it had the seal of approval. If spitting is all I have to worry about I'll be happy. We've had the weigh-in and the teams are sorted so, by this time next year, I'll be a bunch more educated about rugby. I'm on a fast learning curve. We're off to the Rugby World Cup later in the year so I will truly have to get the game sorted in my head or be a complete embarrassment to the whanau. I think I need more conversations with Mr Haden and to ask more intelligent questions than what the uniform looks like.