I’ve spent years hearing my cousins and friends regale to me the utterly bizarre behaviour of parents on the sidelines at their kids’ football matches .

Many of them now have teenagers and have therefore been knee-deep in the quite frankly surreal world of being a “soccer mom” for quite some time. (Although an Americanism, it basically describes a parent who adds ferrying their kids to training and matches, on top of an already busy parenting schedule.)

I thought their stories were overblown, isolated incidents that couldn’t possibly happen in real life. But as I start my own “soccer mom” journey, my gosh: I definitely believe them now.

I remember my cousin’s wife telling me she’d started wearing earplugs during her son’s games. She couldn’t fight every parent who threw racist abuse a

See Full Page