
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