Blue suits and lucky pants

Footballers are a superstitious lot. We've all heard the stories of players not shaving during a Cup run, being last out of the tunnel or putting on their kit in a strictly prescribed order. Don Revie famously had a lucky blue suit, French skipper Laurent Blanc insisted on kissing the bald pate of Fabien Barthez before each game at the 1998 World Cup and at least one Shamrock Rovers player can be seen hopping across the touchline every time he steps onto the pitch. And as for wearing lucky pants, well, someone with a bit of business savvy should open a lucky pant megastore.

Psychologists have written papers about such things, attempting to analyze the relevance of these rituals and creating complex theories on the human condition as evidenced by a bloke who insists on singing a verse of "Knees up Mother Brown" before taking a penalty. All very interesting I'm sure, and yes, if studying human behaviour is how you pay the bills, then knock yourself out. But I don't think supporters of the game see anything very mysterious in it. After all, football grounds across the globe are packed to the gills with fans who are every bit as superstitious as the players.

A mate of mine used to drive the same route to Turner's Cross for every home game until, one day in the League winning season of 2005, road works meant he had to come by an alternative route. He arrived in the pub before the game, a quivering heap of doom. I tried to reason with him, pointing out that it wasn't so much a 'lucky' route as the shortest and most obvious one, but he was having none of it. City were going to lose and that was all there was to it. City beat Drogheda United one nil.

As I see it, it's all about seizing control of stressful and unpredictable situations, the outcome of which you care about deeply, and reducing them to one or two simple and controllable actions. By simply pulling on odd socks in the morning we can guarantee that our beloved club will beat those oily narks from up the road. It's all beautifully simple and hugely reassuring. The problem is that, if you're of that frame of mind, those simple and controllable actions grow ever more out of control and become so compulsive that you become utterly unable to function without them.

What happens when the lucky pants get misplaced, or worse, thrown out by a better half who is sick of the sight of them? "What did you do with my lucky pants?" is a compelling opening line for a domestic barney and “She abused my lucky pants” has likely appeared on more than a few divorce citations. It is the nature of superstition that it builds an inviolable nest in the corner of our brains that ends up causing us as much torment as the peace of mind it was originally designed for.

Thankfully, my own superstitions were limited, although the ones that made it through were as well anchored as any that a voodoo ridden footballer could come up with. As a young player I had to wear number 10 and if I didn't get it I went into the most unedifying sulk. I don't know why that was, all I can say is that I 'liked' the number.

Perhaps, as an aficionado of the QPR teams of the 1970's, the legacy of Rodney Marsh and Stan Bowles had something to do with it. But I don't think so. It was more to do with the number itself; it's confident shape, the pleasing, concise sound of it as it was spoken. “Hey, Gary, watch ten, he's getting too much space!”. Hearing that bawled at an opponent from the touch line was a rare but profound pleasure and had as much to do with the identity of the number as any egotistical assumption regarding my qualities as a footballer.

I also fell foul of the curse of the programme collector. I love football programmes, as many fans do, and I have a stupid amount of them gathered, unread, in carefully catalogued binders. Having a programme from 'the game' is one thing, but when you start trying to complete sets, regardless of whether you were there or not you are in big trouble.

It's not strictly a superstition, I know, but have you ever tried to kick the habit? It's worse than trying to give up smoking. When I finally decided that I had enough programmes in my life and that they were too expensive, too commercial and too glossy (England) or not glossy enough (Ireland), the habit was so deeply embedded that not buying one felt akin to committing a war crime. Every time I walked past a programme stand an inner voice that sounded terrifyingly like the voice from the Exorcist would scream at me to go back and do my duty.

And, just like the demands of nicotine, it is a compulsion that stays with you, even when you think you have beaten it. I had cause to be back stage at St Pats recently and while I was hanging around I saw a box of excess programmes from the Europa League match against Hertha Berlin in 2008. I stood looking at them for ages, wanting to take one, like when you stumble across a pile of newspapers outside a shop early in the morning. I eventually asked for one, like a child asking for a biscuit, and it now takes up some space in a box under the stairs.

Why? Why did I have to have it? The match meant nothing to me. I wasn't there, I don't have any significant amount of Pats programmes that needed bolstering, and I have never read it. But there you go, being a football fan means that you will inevitably invest in the rituals that surround it. And, no matter how strong you think you are, when the time comes to change the shape of your match day experience the demons within won't give up without a fight.

I'll leave you with one example of the destructive power of football's communion with superstition. In 2008 the coach of the Zimbabwe team Midlands Portland Cement sent his players into the Zambezi river as part of an attempt at ritual cleansing. Unfortunately the Zambezi river has rather a lot of crocodiles in it and while seventeen entered, only sixteen emerged. Maybe wearing the same pants for nine months isn't such a big deal after all.