Dusty reminds us to go back in search of sporting beauty

Driving home for Christmas can do strange things to strange and not-so-strange people. The mind, as Paradise Lost told us, is its own place — it can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven. The journey for some may be filled with unbridled joy and excitement, anticipating long overdue reunions. F

For others it can be difficult – burdensome, laden with anxiety and dread. If you are like me and you can’t remember whether you have even gone through the toll yet, well, you probably fall someplace in the emotional buffer zone. Lost in a wormhole of half-thoughts, oblivious to the seasonal dross on the radio, there is only one song playing on a loop in your mind and scoring your camino west into the sinking solstice sun — Dusty Springfield and Goin’ Back.

What an odd world it is that the ESB marketing department circa 1988 is responsible for providing the contextual backdrop to such a seminal collection of moments in your life. Imagine the woolly jumper/Terry McDermott ‘tash combo the guy responsible for that add was sporting when he pitched the idea of wholesome college kid returning home dreaming of electric blankets, carte blanche use of a tumble drier, and the all-to-rare treat of the immersion being left on. Adding Springfield’s voice to the scene was pure Mad Men genius. In fact, Seamus from ESB marketing was probably the inspiration for Don Draper’s character — save for the Glenmorangie fuelled sartorial elegance. This was ESB’s Coca Cola moment, and credit where it’s due, they nailed it.

Nostalgia is a dangerous sauce however, especially served hot around Christmas.

What are our memories anyways only our jaundiced perceptions of what we think occurred? Couple that nostalgia with the withering sense many of us hold that the sports world around us is one big corrupt façade and not at all like it used to be, and suddenly you find yourself in Scrooge territory.

So, let’s take a breath and smell the mince pies. Last Sunday evening there were almost routine examples of why the beauty always beats the beast — and you didn’t even have to leave your couch to witness them.

Moorefield produced a comeback even Mel Gibson would be proud of. Undoubtedly AIB will try and hijack it, hashtag it, but it doesn’t deflect from the madcap brilliance of what unfolded. Unscripted and bizarre, it was a timely example of the truth being stranger than fiction.

Over in Pittsburgh, with garbage time left on the clock, Tom Brady marched his otherwise mediocre New England Patriots team downfield to the Steelers’ end zone in an improbable sequence of near-death acrobatics. In doing so, Brady added Exhibit 425 to his open and shut case for sporting immortality. Go back and look at the tape.

Watch Tight End Rob Gronkowski pirouette his gargantuan 6ft 6 120kg body to pick a pass thrown like a torpedo off his toes. That same night, as the Kardashians spoke into their phones about how best to prepare for Christmas in Calabasas on Channel 147, back in La Liga FC Barcelona choreographed a passage of play of such childlike simplicity it would belittle a Russian ballet. Impromptu and unrehearsed, the goal they conjured will never be imitated.

Despair at the GAA’s treatment of the club game, hate Tom Brady for the Trump hat in his locker or his proclivity for wearing Ugg boots, loathe Barça for their Qatari money, but the suspicion and the cynicism can overwhelm us all to the point of making us forget how and why we watch in the first place. Something beautiful was created. Something a shit load of people witnessed, and crucially it made them happy. Shouldn’t that make us happy too?

I’m as guilty as anybody. Much as I hate to admit it, I realise nobody from AIG taught Dean Rock how to hit that free of frees. No matter the millions, it’s just a moment in time and a fallible man trying to identify the precise piece of stitching on a pigskin, willing the demons from his mind and ignoring the palpitations of his heart and trusting a talent honed since childhood. Yet we seem insistent on finding the bad. Look hard enough at anything and you will find something to hate.

It’s said often, but it needs to be said again. Sport is important because it’s not. There are far too many reminders for all of us — in kids’ hospital wards, on bank statements, in tattered sleeping bags on the streets at night — reminders of the stuff that’s truly important. It would be detrimental to us all if sport stopped being the ultimate escape from the stuff that really matters.

Of course, it would be wrong to ignore the PEDs or the financial doping or the extra-terrestrial salaries, but we are all Froome’d out. We have consumed too much McGregor and now we have gout. This Christmas let’s remember, it all started in the same place. A kid and a ball or a bike or a seven-iron delivered to the foot of a Christmas tree.

That’s why it’s important to listen to Dusty. Thinking young and growing old is no sin. It might be the medicine we all need to recover our lust for this sporting life. The beauty is there. You just need to remember how to find it.