Welcome back boys. I’m sure you enjoyed the break and are ready for another term of hard work and fun at Otago Boys'.

Over the break I was unsure of what I would speak about today. I was looking back on some of the captivating last words that had already been presented this year but nothing really came to mind, nothing that I really cared about until last Tuesday when I made a mistake. 

This mistake came in the form of my first ever yellow card and ten minutes in the bin at a crucial time in the rugby match against the Dunedin Makos. Although I believe that the reasoning for the card was pulled from thin air, I still placed myself in off the ball play and put my team under unnecessary pressure when the boys were already fighting hard. This got me thinking, I make a lot of mistakes, in fact, I am an expert at it. So I thought, this is what I'll talk about, my three steps that set things right after my wrong doings. They are owning your mistake, rectifying it and moving on from it.

Step 1

Owning your mistake. A few weeks back I was on my way to school. A few mates and I were kicking a tennis ball around having a bit of fun when I made the decision to kick the ball as hard as I could at one of them. I ended up kicking the ball at a car that was driving down Stuart Street. The driver of the car met us at the bottom of Littlebourne. We could've kept on walking because she didn't know who did it but we all knew that she was not happy and the decision to turn myself in and own up made the outcome of the situation a lot better. 

Step 2

Rectifying your mistake. The first day at hostel this year I was driving in my new car that I had just purchased a few days earlier. I came flying into a park right outside the hostel feeling pretty chuffed about it and smirking at one of the boys who I had beaten to it. I took my foot off the brake and rammed square into the car in front of me. After talking to the relaxed owner of the car who didn't really mind too much as there were only a couple of scratches and no dents on his bumper. He summed up our conversation with "mate it's not the end of the world but you made the mistake so it's up to you if you want to fix it." So the next day I headed down to Repco and got a few touch-up pens and filled in the scratches. I showed the owner what I had done as I gave him the pens and he was more than impressed. I didn't have to fix the scratches on the car but rectifying my mistake took away the guilt and gained back the trust of the car owner.

Step 3 

Learning from the mistake and moving on. After thinking over the events that lead up to my yellow card there were many things I should have done differently. I should not have got distracted and sucked into the foul play with the Makos and I should have thought about my team before myself. I used this learning experience during my last game when I was pushed off the ball by an opposition player, I turned around and walked away. Sometimes boys it is hard to make the right choices and a lot of the time those choices lead to mistakes.

As Bruce Lee once said, "Mistakes are always forgivable if one has the courage to admit them."