Yer Ma team goal to help mums get out on the field
'Yer ma' may be a common Northern Ireland phrase usually uttered as a put down but now the expression has been claimed by some rugby players to inspire mothers to get back into playing the sport.
The inspiration for the Yer Ma team, which has played in Rugby Sevens competitions, came about when Cooke’s Sorcha Mac Laimhin noticed a baby on the sidelines at a match.
“We had a cup match in Ballymena and we had a player coming back from having a baby,” said Mac Laimhin. "It was her first match back and she had her baby with her.
“The baby was being wheeled up and down the side of the pitch and Jayne, the mum, was a wee bit nervous...‘was she going to be ok?’ that sort of thing.
“We were like ‘don’t worry, somebody will be there to look after her, sure I’m a mum and Alanagh has kids, Fiona has kids and so does Donna’.
"We looked around and between the team we had eight or nine players who were mums and we thought we should start a sevens team.
“That’s where it kind of started from and we reached out to other clubs to try and get as many mums involved as we could and came up with the name.
“One of the kids designed the jersey for us so it was a real family affair and then we went to a couple of tournaments in the summer.
"I would really love to see this as a tool for getting people to start playing rugby because, at the moment, the team is made up of mums that already play in other clubs and that is great.
"But I’d love to see newcomers to rugby because they have got this Yer Ma sevens to go and play.
“Ideally I’d like a new project started where it is all about getting new people to rugby clubs to start playing rugby and hopefully that is something that the Ulster Rugby Foundation should be able to support in the future.”
Yer Ma isn’t a results-driven team - it’s more about participation and the social aspect of rugby.
“There is no training involved at all, it is purely invitational and there is no pressure to perform well, it is just about having fun," Mac Laimhin said. "There are so few things out there for mums just to enjoy that aren’t aligned to looking after your kids or keeping in house, so this is just something for mums to have fun...it’s just for the craic, as I said to them ‘there is no expectation of performance only expectation of fun'.
“We went to the Carrick 7s, which was our first tournament this year. We lost our first match and didn’t score any tries, we lost our second match and scored a try and then we won our third match...so we progressively improved and it was good craic.”
Mac Laimhin has hailed the Ulster Rugby Foundation.
“I think it is amazing to see it launched and I’m looking forward to seeing where it can go in the future," she said. "It is great that women and girls are one of the key priorities of the foundation because girls’ rugby is the fastest-growing sport in Ireland.
"I think this sort of support is really vital, it is great to see another avenue of generating income to support grassroots and I think Ulster have been really clever.”