Colin Sheridan: how a childhood sweetheart of a team can still somehow make us happy
Arsenal midfielder Reiss Nelson celebrates after scoring a late winner versus Bournemouth. Picture: GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images)
A week ago, a prominent columnist at the English Times went on the solo runs of all solo runs in a piece titled “My husband used to be hot - If I met my partner now, would I fancy him?”. The appropriately named Molly Gunn took aim at civil convention and fired off tracer round after tracer round in the type of rant you’d expect was conceived in a late-night taxi after she’d received one too many “Where are you now?” texts. Whatever Gunn’s motive or logic, she asked awkward, (justifiably) taboo questions about commitment and attraction, none of which - conveniently - need to be listed here as they’re pretty much all inferred in the article's headline.
What happened next will be taught on journalism master's programs for decades. Social media outrage followed by writers' defence, memeification rolling into parliamentary questions, prompting an ill-advised writer's retort, which elicited further social media outrage (repeat cycle). An uncomfortable couple of weeks for the Gunns, no doubt, but one which did at least birth one of the first great urban dictionary babies of the year; to “mollygunn” something; that is, to prosecute one's love of a person or thing (and write an article in a national newspaper about it).
I have, as it happens, mollygunned the Mayo senior football team many times over the years, usually in Spring, and not - as you’d expect - when they’re losing and playing abysmally, but when they’re once again winning hearts and minds in national league campaigns by playing like Brazil in the early rounds of the 1982 World Cup, all happy and joyous and encumbered by legacy and generational trauma. That version of Mayo, the Paul Mescal version, the one which can pull off a stud earring and hockey-mullet hairstyle just by being sound, that version is easy to fall in love with but harder to remain infatuated by, because at some point the stud becomes annoying and the mullet just looks plain daft. The essence of the person endures, however, and so by early summer and after a few bad haircuts and infected earlobes, my love for Mayo is steadfast again. Win, lose or draw, there is a meticulous comfort in being from somewhere and - for that reason alone - being awarded a sort of emotional pension till death. One which will pay you regardless of health or happiness. What feeds it may be nostalgia, hope, hubris? Regardless it’s there, and despite annual mollygunnings, it remains, different, but unbroken.
The same can not be said for my other childhood love, Manchester United. As a kid, I was as devout as they come. Newspaper clippings and homemade jerseys (it was the early nineties) and listening to Champions League matches on 5 Live when I should’ve been doing homework. It mattered, a lot, and although my burgeoning romance coincided with a golden age for the club, my love was not contingent on it. Then, one day, in an act of cold-blooded audit the aforementioned Molly would’ve been proud of, I fell out of love. Hard. Memory associates it directly with Roy Keane leaving, but as I revisit that now, it all seems a little too convenient. I wish I could say “I didn't like the direction the club was headed in”, but that’s nonsense. Whatever happened, it ended and I ended it. The club went on to bigger and better things and I felt nothing, no jealousy or remorse, just an indifference that remains to this day.
When it comes to “football”, I envy those who still care, despite their own constant mollygunnings. A good friend - an Arsenal fan who regularly flirted with abandoning his faith - almost had me believing again on Saturday as he watched his team come from 0-2 down to beat Bournemouth with the literal last kick of the game. It’s a very contemporary thing, to experience a football match not by watching it with your eyes, but by seeing your phone light up in a series of messages – passionate and frustrated curses, mostly - before an outpouring of unfettered joy as a goal you had no idea had just been scored was banged in. His joy feels different, he says, because this is a team nobody expected a league challenge from. A likeable bunch with local youngsters and a passionate manager. “woulda bitten your hand off for 4th”, he said, when asked did he see it coming.
It warmed me up, the notion that a childhood sweetheart of a football team could still somehow make us happy. That, despite being mollygunned on an annual basis, my friend stayed, not because his team were easy on the eye, not because it was easy, but because there was something much deeper, something beyond the bedroom.
Last October, as the MLB postseason found its rhythm, the Houston Astros defeated the Seattle Mariners in an epic encounter that lasted six hours and 22 minutes and a mammoth 18 innings. It ended 1-0, which basically means the only meaningful offensive act of the game happened in the last of those 380 or so minutes. While an outlier in terms of duration, it was a contest symptomatic of the great dichotomous struggle the game of Baseball finds itself entrenched in - that of tradition versus modernity. Patience versus time. In a world increasingly committed to speed and excess, baseball, and the pace it’s played at, sits as an outlier. Attendances are down, and national television audiences are shrinking. As the NFL has consistently refined its “product” to become as easy on the eye as possible, baseball has, for the most part, stayed loyal to its base by largely standing still. This season, however, all that’s set to change with the introduction of the “pitch clock”, an innovation that does exactly what it says on the tin (pitchers need to throw in a specified time window), and one that is specifiaccly designed to speed up games and increase the action by reducing strikeouts and increasing actual hits. Basically, the less time a pitcher has to set himself and throw, the more error prone he should be. The introduction of the pitch clock in spring training has in and of itself turned eyeballs towards the sport with the result that many “swing voters” - those who could take or leave the sport - may be intrigued enough to turn their eyes back to the ballparks. Much of what makes baseball great, however, is the psychological tug-of-war between batter and pitcher during the very resets the MLB are trying to eradicate. A delicate dance, then, between giving the people what they want and preserving what makes it so special to begin with.
Early Saturday evening and a packed Celtic Park, who could have ever predicted that any Division 2 clash could captivate and compel as Derry’s one point defeat of Dublin did. Whether Rory Gallagher’s Midas touch can elevate the Oakleafers to genuine All-Ireland contenders is genuinely as fascinating a storyline as Dublin’s current status as challengers. In the first half in the Bogside they looked irresistible. By the end of the second, they looked all too human. Still, should the two meet later this summer you’d be hard pressed not to defer to Dublin’s muscle memory being enough to win. It is just another storyline in what promises to be a fascinating championship.
An interesting shift in analysis following Ireland’s victory over Italy in Rome last weekend, where the consensus had it that everyone was just happy Italy were good rather than Ireland - the best team in the world right now, remember - decidedly poor and off-colour. Both things can be true, of course, but the odd tone in reportage may reflect a lack of critical thinking in how we look at Ireland. Without a win in three, how likely are the Azzurri to clip Wales or Scotland in the coming weeks? In order for that praise to be truly justified , Italy need to win one of their remaining fixtures. Otherwise it could be we were patronising the opposition instead of criticising our own.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
