Hanging off the notice board in my office at work (the place where I am surrounded by things of significance everywhere) is this medal.
Over the last 2 final years of my football coaching, I won 2 winners' medals with the team that my son played in on a Saturday that I (assisted) coached, and 1 runner-up medal for the league in the final season that I coached with the Sunday team.
The Sunday team was my team; we never won the league.
On one occasion, we were six-nil up in a game to win, to win the league, and we lost 7-6 with the last kick of the ball (no joke). In another game, we were 3-nil up to win the league and drew 3-3.
Probably that's a problem with coaching, probably that's the problem with me.
The medal that's shown here is the culmination of my 10 years of coaching this group of lads. We won the cup twice in extraordinary circumstances (I much prefer winning the cup to winning the league); both of those events were huge, we were 3-0 down in a penalty shootout, and we won.
But the medal represents everything about building a team, everything about looking after a group of people, everything about the joy of being together.
You don't get to win all the time, and actually (and contrary to most public opinion), winning is just not the point. The medal is not there to remind me that we were runners-up; the medal is there to remind me that as I watched these boys complete their A levels and go off to university, or jobs or careers or apprenticeships or wherever they're going (almost as friends of mine), I understand that they have learned an extraordinary amount through this, but nothing like the amount that I learned, and the privilege that I had to look after a team like that.
Leadership in any form is an extraordinary privilege; it doesn't always feel like it, but it always does feel like it when it's finished.
Blog Post Number -4514