The parent in the stands at every single game was using their only free evenings on you.

An adult’s free evenings are a small and finite resource. Sitting in the cold to watch a game they have no stake in, week after week, is one of the largest things a person can spend that resource on. It looks like nothing from the pitch. From their side it was the choice they made over rest, friends and everything else.

Say something after the next one that is not about the score. Thank them for coming, specifically, as though it were not automatic, because it is not. And if the games have stopped, the message still works years later, and they have not forgotten a single one of them.