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60

OUR

Club

BUILDING FRIENDSHIPS THROUGH

A SHARED LOVE OF ULSTER RUGBY

For the past two seasons the Grant family from East

Belfast - Charlie (10), Ollie (9) and Harry (5) have been

Junior Season Ticket Holders and have attended all

home matches at Kingspan Stadium as a family. It’s

here that their friendship with another Junior Season

Ticket Holder, Charlie Adams (11) began and this is

their story…

The boys met coincidentally in OUR Quarter (the

base for OUR Club) Ulster Rugby’s supporters

club for Junior Season Ticket Holders, where

Charlie Adam’s mum Julie is a volunteer.

Over the past two years the boys met and

chatted briefly before a match and their

interaction continued in the Family Stand, where

coincidentally their seats were beside eachother

and therefore their friendship developed and

they became really good friends as they cheered

on Ulster together and shared their chips and

sweets.

With the Grant boys being from East Belfast and

members of Instonians RFC and Charlie Adams

being from Newtownabbey, and a member of

Ballyclare RFC, the close friends would never

have met if it wasn’t for OUR Club!

Charlie A attends all home games with his

grandad Alex but he spends the whole match

talking to Ollie and Charlie Grant, ignoring his

poor Granda!

“I love going to Ulster matches with my Granda

and my mum is always at them too,” says Charlie.

“But I love them even more now that I have made

friends with Ollie and his brothers. I sit beside

Ollie at all the games and we have lots of craic.

We chat about our own rugby match from the

week before and if we made any good tackles.

We also mess about and pretend we are older

and playing for Ulster and what players we want

to be like. I want to Be Marcell Coetzee and Ollie

wants to be Craig Gilroy.

“At Christmas, I was invited to a movie night with

the Ulster players at Kingspan Stadium, as a treat

for being on the OUR Club points leaderboard. It

was brilliant as I sat beside Craig Gilroy, and was

able to tell my friends I was at the cinema with

him! Then at Easter, I was one of the top scorers

again and was invited to a training session, where

players coached and hosted a training session

for us. It was awesome, but I was disappointed

the Grant boys missed it because they were on

holiday.”

Charlie, Ollie and Harry Grant come to all home

matches with their Mum, Dad, Granny and

Granda.

Ollie says, “I love going to Kingspan

and my mum brings us down early

so we can go to OUR Club to see

Julie and the other girls to get our

faces painted and collect any puzzle

challenges to gain points for the

leaderboard. Then we go up to our seats

in Family Stand and I sit beside Charlie Adams.

We have good fun and we talk about our favourite

rugby players and who we want to be like when

we are older. My favourite players are Rory Best

and Paddy Jackson but I think when I am older I

will be like Craig Gilroy but with better hair!”

Charlie, Ollie’s brother also sits beside Charlie

Adams and he says: “When I first met Charlie we

started talking about rugby and other stuff. Now

at the home matches we sit beside eachother

and really enjoy catching up every week. At

Easter our mums took us to We Are Vertigo so we

could all meet up. It was brilliant, so hopefully we

can meet up again over the summer holidays.

“If it wasn’t for OUR Club my brothers

and I would never have met Charlie Adams, so

we are really happy that we became members

and we hope to enjoy lots of good memories

together in the future.”

OUR CLUB