Football and Girlfriends - a lethal combination
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In many ways football clubs are like girlfriends. They can sometimes surprise you with their brilliance, catapulting your brain into a wave of ecstasy. But they can also drift away and betray you, breaking your heart into smithereens.
In essence, winning the league is quite like capturing the girl of your dreams, while suffering relegation is the equivalent of that same girl running off with someone else behind your back without any warning.
Fans of Drogheda United can understand this analogy as they face into life in the First Division – four seasons ago they were surfing on the crest of a wave, moving to the top of Irish football and now they are heading into the second tier with many uncertainties surrounding life at United Park.
Let us continue the comparison for a minute: Drogs fans probably feel hurt and dismayed by the shenanigans which have seen them drop from the heady heights of 2007 and into the First Division, with trips to Salthill and Ferrycarrig Park in the offing for 2011. C’est la vie, as the French speaking amongst us would say.
Thankfully that’s where the comparisons end, because unless you’re a fan of a club that goes extinct – you’ll still be attached to the club with no way out.
While there is always the possibility of moving on and finding some new girl or boy (depending on your persuasion) to spend your time with, the team will always be there. At times the club might be attached to you like a horrible mole in between your eyes, but it will still be there, a major part of your life.
It’s just the appearance of a club which changes. The heart and soul of it will always remain but players will come and go, managers will promise the world (quite like some of those former partners you’ve had) before running off in search of a bigger pay packet, while owners can also do the same before leaving your side in a worse state than the condition they were in before the day they came in.
Still, isn’t all of this the main reason that we become so attached to teams in the first place? That knowledge that they may break our hearts can hurt like a knife to the chest, but hope springs eternal and we all dream of the good old days, praying that they’ll return again sometime soon when our respective clubs fall into the lower echelons of Irish football.
Our teams lure us in like an attractive magnet, satisfying or desires by giving us success even though we always want more. And when there is no success we may whine and complain, but the fact of it all is: we’ll still be there on a cold Wednesday evening watching a 0-0 draw in the bitter cold.
Drog days are over, as Florence and the Machine might have said if they were from Louth. But they will be back, it’s just the uncertainty of that timescale to their return to the big time which will prove most difficult for fans of the claret and blue in 2011.
In essence, winning the league is quite like capturing the girl of your dreams, while suffering relegation is the equivalent of that same girl running off with someone else behind your back without any warning.
Fans of Drogheda United can understand this analogy as they face into life in the First Division – four seasons ago they were surfing on the crest of a wave, moving to the top of Irish football and now they are heading into the second tier with many uncertainties surrounding life at United Park.
Let us continue the comparison for a minute: Drogs fans probably feel hurt and dismayed by the shenanigans which have seen them drop from the heady heights of 2007 and into the First Division, with trips to Salthill and Ferrycarrig Park in the offing for 2011. C’est la vie, as the French speaking amongst us would say.
Thankfully that’s where the comparisons end, because unless you’re a fan of a club that goes extinct – you’ll still be attached to the club with no way out.
While there is always the possibility of moving on and finding some new girl or boy (depending on your persuasion) to spend your time with, the team will always be there. At times the club might be attached to you like a horrible mole in between your eyes, but it will still be there, a major part of your life.
It’s just the appearance of a club which changes. The heart and soul of it will always remain but players will come and go, managers will promise the world (quite like some of those former partners you’ve had) before running off in search of a bigger pay packet, while owners can also do the same before leaving your side in a worse state than the condition they were in before the day they came in.
Still, isn’t all of this the main reason that we become so attached to teams in the first place? That knowledge that they may break our hearts can hurt like a knife to the chest, but hope springs eternal and we all dream of the good old days, praying that they’ll return again sometime soon when our respective clubs fall into the lower echelons of Irish football.
Our teams lure us in like an attractive magnet, satisfying or desires by giving us success even though we always want more. And when there is no success we may whine and complain, but the fact of it all is: we’ll still be there on a cold Wednesday evening watching a 0-0 draw in the bitter cold.
Drog days are over, as Florence and the Machine might have said if they were from Louth. But they will be back, it’s just the uncertainty of that timescale to their return to the big time which will prove most difficult for fans of the claret and blue in 2011.
About Alan Smith
Alan Smith works as a sub-editor for the Guardian newspaper in London. Originally from Cork, he freelances for several other newspapers and websites. Follow him on twitter @alansmith90. View Full Profile