To move or not to move, that is the question…
Well, at least it’s the question in this story from Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole?” page…
And we want you to get all the details and let us know what you think in the comments!
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AITA for not vacating the public oval so a private school football team can practice?
“As a new years resolution, my friends and I agreed to do more fun cardio during the. Our area is pretty built up, so we go down to the local community oval play 3v3 soccer. We swapped from Wednesday afternoons to Thursday last week and this was the first time we ran into the issue:
We’re running about as normal until a dozen or so kids and a few adults pile out of a local private school bus. The ovals big so we make sure we’re only using a little corner. One of the coaches comes up to us and says “I’ll get you guys to finish up. We’re just about to start our practice session.”
We ask if we can just use a corner but he insists they need the whole oval.We’re a bit confused but clear out none the less, maybe they can book the oval?
Instead of going straight home I duck to the shops for a drink. Walking back past I’m annoyed to see them just doing ball drills and sprints and stuff that could easily be done in a quarter of the oval.I do some research and confirm there is no way to book the ovals, they are shared community resources. Every day I drive past the private school and they have 3 immaculately kept ovals privately fenced in. I keep thinking back to my public school that didn’t even have an oval and for sports festivals we needed to walk over to the public fields and we would share with whoever was there.
Thursday comes around as I drive home I make note of the 3 completely empty fields at the school (two NRL and a Cricket field) before I join my friends at the oval. We get about 20 minutes into our game before the bus rocks up again.
As last time, the coach wanders over and tells us to pack it up so they can start practice. I ask them, since they are just doing drills, if we can share and that we will stay out of their way.
“Sorry guys no can do.”
I ask why they don’t use one of the schools ovals
“Those are NRL and Cricket ovals, we’re an AFL team”
I point out this is a public oval for everyone.
At this point the coaches all come over and start asking why we’re being so difficult and uncooperative. They start saying we’re being a**holes and getting in the way of kids enjoying sports.at this point I put my foot down, saying we’re going to stay, we were here first, and they’re welcome to share with us.
They get to practice and there is more than enough space for us to coexist, but about 20 minutes later a cop car parks up next to the oval and two cops walk over to us. They ask what we we’re doing and we explain its 3v3 soccer.
They ask us to be mindful to share the oval before going over to talk with the coaches. As they are leaving I ask them what its all about and they tell me they had a call from “someone” that we were disrupting the sports team, but as long as we aren’t getting in their way, they can’t see anything wrong.
So we’re pretty sure they called the cops on us because we wouldn’t leave…
I think its complete c**p that a private school can come in and just annex public facilities, but the coaches looks made me feel like I was being a d**k.”
And here’s what Reddit users had to say.
One person said they are NTA and there seems to be something fishy going on here.
Photo Credit: Reddit
Another reader said they need to get their local council involved.
Photo Credit: Reddit
And this individual said they’re NTA and this is a public space.
Photo Credit: Reddit
What do you think?
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