How I choose my club

When I arrived in Perth in December 2010 I didn't know anyone. I was living with a host family, a happy couple in their late 50s, and I was attending an English course as part of the University requirements for my postgraduate degree. People from the course were not really interesting and their English was much worse than mine. At home I was pretty disappointed to discover that my host dad didn't follow Rugby. I thought in Australia everyone was following Rugby, I mean, they won the world cup twice and they have 5 teams in the Super 15 tournament!
With time I found out that Australia as opposed to Italy is a multi-sport nation. Depending on the geographical region one sport gets more attention than others but in general the sport ranking based on popularity is Australian Football (AFL), Cricket, Rugby League (NRL) and Rugby Union. AFL, NRL and union are winter sports whilst Cricket, Soccer and Basketball are played in summer.
Back to me. Since the only people I could talk in English with to learn something were a couple that I couldn't even be friends on facebook with,  joining a club was not only part of that dream but a necessity. I asked someone reliable enough to give me the right answer. Google said there were a few clubs I could join in Perth and one of them was the University of Western Australia Rugby Football Club or Uni Rugby for close friends.

I was excited about the idea of playing for the University I would attend and this particular statement on the club’s website got my attention.
UWA Rugby Club is renowned throughout Perth for its expansive style of rugby and social life.
Dad always told me to hold on to certainties I had in life.
I thought, “well if I can’t fit in the expansive style of Rugby I will for sure in the social life, I was really good at it back home.”
So I emailed the club and a person replied very kindly, even offering me a lift to the trainings! And he did so for the next few weeks. Boyd, that’s his name, a man in his 50’s with a good rugby build. Average height, with a nice and thick neck and a pair of square shoulders. Heavy enough to look after himself in a ruck, I would have guessed him playing hooker but he told me later he was a scrum-half. Well I thought that this store keeper was really kind to pick me up from home and give me a ride to the trainings. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that this humble man so down to earth was actually the president of the club. I just assumed he couldn't be cause of the tasks he was performing were not what one would usually expect from the Pres.
Another sign I was in the right club, humility. I just love it.
Realistically my English was not that bad when I first came in Australia, I have learned it most of my life and in school I was always above the average. I didn't have difficulties to understand people at home, in school or in the few everyday situations I faced so far. I was confident trainings wouldn't be much different. Man, how wrong I was.
I was used to play in a club where we would struggle to have 2 complete senior teams, which is about 35 players training at the same time. Here there were at least four teams training all together.

Heaps of people.

In the rare occasion someone asked me something, after the third “pardon?” I would probably understand 3/4 of the question, otherwise conversation within groups were a moment where I had to observe body language to understand when to nod, laugh or just pretend to be interested. I was really good at this! That’s what I thought, probably I just looked like a really “special” person to most of the people there.
What I didn't get in the beginning was the presence of so many players from different countries like New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, England, Canada, Scotland, Mauritius and France. Many different accents I never had the chance to hear before. The actual training was even worse, instructions for drills or exercises had words I never heard before neither in school or in movies. Luckily in this situations I needed just to  make sure I wasn't the first to perform the task and follow what others were doing. I was good at this too!
After a month or so the language barrier was slowly disappearing I got to know people better and started to make some friends. When it came to playing Rugby I wasn't that bad, I knew what I was doing and I felt familiar with it.
I was 16.000 Ks away from home, but there on that field I felt at home…