A rugby festival where the game is only part of the story

The National

03-05-2025

Stuart Mitchell, a mathematician by profession (but today a primal man of meat and flame), repeats my question.
From the raised embankment, he surveys the great sweep of the Dalziel Festival of Youth Rugby — the 33rd edition — in full, noisy, glorious swing below. His brow furrows for a moment before yielding to a wry smile.
"Hunners," he answers, with the quiet certainty of a man who has seen it all before.
At the half-barrel grill, smoke curling into the cool April air, Stuart's father, Les, tends to beef patties and sausages. His grandson, Euan, is front of house, conducting a roaring trade as he eloquently inquires of each punter: "Onions. Aye or naw?"
Together, they'll fuel the thousands who come not just for the sport, but for something deeper.
Here, amidst the laughter, the whistles, and the low roar of life, the three Mitchells embody a legacy that runs through the heart of this festival like grain through ancient wood.
(Image: Euan Duguid) Because the Dalziel Festival of Youth Rugby is not merely a competition. It is a living ritual: a celebration of community, continuity, and the unspoken, unbreakable bond between generations.
The day begins, as it always does, with a cadence as natural as heartbeat. The sun plays hide and seek with a mottled sky, scattering a soft, forgiving light across the pristine grounds.
Senior players, some of them barely removed from their own days of mini-rugby, swap the club's black and blue strip for fluorescent vests and two-way radios, guiding cars with certainty and craic.
Tents rise. Tuck shops brim with sweets of dubious nutritional value. And the pitches, roped out the night before with all the precision of a cartographer, take on their vibrant, expectant shape.
The festival begins to hum. An electric, organic thing — alive with young players, coaches barking out instructions, parents straining their voices and their nerves. Nostalgia clings to the air like woodsmoke, but underneath it, there is something else: a current of growth, of hope. Of becoming.
Dalziel RFC's grounds are more than a stage for this annual gathering. They are sacred soil, a living memorial to the young men of Dalziel High School who marched off to the Second World War and did not return.
Once crumbling in the spectral shadow of the industrial inferno of Ravenscraig's Dantean furnaces, Cleland Estate has been transformed by the resourcefulness of the Dalziel High School War Memorial Trust. The thunder of steel production has all but gone. Here, though, one of Scotland's finest sporting facilities — well-manicured pitches and a place where memory and aspiration meet — has risen.
It was on these fields that Alan Calder, Dalziel stalwart, conceived a simple, radical idea. Laid up in Stonehouse Hospital in 1990, nursing a rugby injury, he imagined a festival where ability mattered less than spirit, where victory was measured not just by scores, but by participation, joy, and belonging.
From that vision, the first Dalziel Youth Rugby Festival was born in 1991. And though Alan tragically passed away in 2008, his spirit remains indelible here. His son, Graham, now shoulders the responsibility, orchestrating the festival with the same blend of passion and organisation, backed by a small army of volunteers: programme editors, referees, caterers, stewards, tournament coordinators — all united by something far stronger than duty.
"Young players of today are the backbone of tomorrow's club rugby," Alan had said.
(Image: Euan Duguid) You can hear those words in the roar of the crowd, see them in the sheer number of young bodies who flock here, and feel them in the heartbeat of the place.
From Hamilton to Strathaven, Uddingston to East Kilbride — and even as far as Ulster, Sale, and Bowdon — the festival now draws teams near and far. Though it has grown into a landmark event on the UK sporting calendar, its spirit remains as it always was: local, familial, and deeply rooted.
Still, the rugby itself, thrilling as it is, is only part of the story.
The true heart of the festival lies beyond the tackles and tries. Beneath the noisy surface, quieter, subtler stories unfold. Connections are reforged. Histories are honoured. Lives, briefly, are knitted closer.
One such thread this year belonged to James "Jambo" Hall, a former Dalziel player standing quietly at the touchline as guest of club president John Mathieson. Only weeks earlier, the otherwise healthy Jambo had been told he had incurable liver cancer after feeling unwell. Months left, if that. And yet here he was finding the courage and strength to show up, smiling, presenting trophies to the winners of one of the youngest age groups.
The players, gleeful and oblivious, had no inkling of the heaviest of gravity surrounding them. But the older ones —Jambo's friends and family — knew.
They knew.
In that small ceremony, in that fleeting transaction of a trophy from one generation to the next, the true spirit of Dalziel lived and breathed.
As the day ambles on, mums gather over trays of rocky road and chewy sweets — silent accomplices in the ever-thus erosion of the West of Scotland's dental fortunes.
First-year pupils Maise and Heidi work the crowd, their raffle salescraft pure art: hawking candles and prosecco for the mums, beer and a Scotland jersey for the dads. Even Alan Sugar would have applauded the bait-the-hook-to-suit-the-fish technique.
At the heart of it all is Willie "Tally" Talbot, master of ceremonies, microphone in hand, his running commentary weaving together score updates, gentle gibes and sponsor acknowledgements including local companies like Millburn Construction whose generosity keeps the show on the road. His voice is the soundtrack of the day, warm and unfaltering, another tradition as enduring as the festival itself.
But this year, there is an absence too large to ignore. This is the first festival without "Big" Jim Paterson, the 6ft 6in bearded behemoth who devoted much of his life to nurturing young rugby talent. His fingerprints are everywhere: in the rise of the Schools Festival he so lovingly built, in the 1995 Digital Scottish Cup victory his S2 side delivered, and now in the newly inaugurated Jim Paterson Trophy, a legacy cast not in silver, but in memories and gratitude.
Life turns, as it must. Babies strapped to mums' chests, toddlers kicking their first balls, first team players-turned- mini coaches, battered from a bruising league campaign in the attrition of Arnold Clark's West Region League Division 1, yet radiant with pride as they gently guide new generations.
(Image: Euan Duguid) The cycle endures — gritty, generous, unbroken.
The Dalziel Festival of Youth Rugby is many things. A tournament. A reunion. A rite of passage.
And as the Mitchells flip their last burger, the final whistles are blown, and the sun sinks behind the stand, the spirit of the festival lingers, resilient and irrepressible.
It will be back next April, as sure as spring itself, a little older, a little stronger, with absent friends and new life.
And through it all, it remains what it has always been — a quiet reminder of what sport truly is.
Heart, community — and ties that endure.