YOUR TEAM, IS YOUR TEAM

We all need passion in our lives.

Somewhere to escape to beyond the humdrum that makes up 90% of our day. A refuge for our heart and soul beyond the traffic and the workload and the bills and the broken fence. There are a few different places where passion can be found but for me, one of the greatest will always be sport.

I simply love sport. I can appreciate the legitimate arguments of its detractors. It is after all, merely 22 ordinary humans, masquerading as gladiators, who are trying to get a ball over a line. Or 10 exceptionally tall individuals trying to drop an oversized ball through a hoop.

But it is so much more than that!

It is our escape, our passion, our joy, our despair. It provides a release for emotions that the rest of your life forces you to suppress. No matter how good the new contract, you can’t start jumping up and down and hugging people in the middle of a board meeting, with your face painted in your company’s colors. You can in a football stadium!?

All of my football teams seem to be, if not no-hopers, little-hopers. My first love, Athlone Town, a little soccer team in the middle of Ireland, have now spent over 20 years in the lower reaches of the second division after scaling the dizzy heights of success for a few seasons in the 80’s. Everton, the team that stirs my blood in England, similarly have had a bare trophy cabinet since 1995.

And when it comes to American football, I simply love the Cleveland Browns.

Somehow it is as if I was never destined to be a fan of the New England Patriots or Manchester United or Barcelona. It is the underachieving teams that will always fascinate me. I feel a great affinity with the loyal bands of supporters who follow their team through thick and thin, often knowing in their hearts that soon after the first ball is kicked, their season is already over. But they never give up. Every year they start out with that hope all over again. They never lose faith. Your team is for life.?

Supporting a downtrodden team seems to reflect the qualities I seem to need more in the rest of my life. Stoicism, strength of character, patience, not afraid to be different from the rest. When success eventually does come, it is as if the agony of the long wait will hugely magnify the pleasure it will bring. Our little morsel will somehow seem far sweeter than the feast that many of the big teams gorge themselves on every year. The passion is in the journey, not the destination.

So following the Cleveland Browns is a bit like believing in God. It is not fashionable in many quarters. You are unlikely to attain a tangible reward for your efforts this year, or next year or even in your lifetime. But in spite of the lack of obvious proof, you never stop believing.

In sport I will always believe that my team can win. In life I will always believe that a day will come when everything will make perfect sense. The results won’t have mattered, only how you played the game. The last will be first and the first will be last. Or perhaps we will all just be equal. We will all be winners.

So one February the Cleveland Browns will win the Superbowl. After the long wait it will be worthy of heaven itself.

But the great thing about hope is, every year, I never stop believing I won’t have to wait that long!