Ulster Rugby vs Leinster

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…

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.

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

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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.”

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