The Drug of Football

Ironing. There’s ironing to do. Laying out the ironing board I start taking the creases out of a few t-shirts that have been draped over the back of a kitchen chair for a couple of days. I had no good reason to do these yesterday, or the day before. Truth be told I have no good reason to do them now. I blame football.

 

I blame following a club so dearly that you resort to ironing on a work night to take your mind off of it. Do I enjoy ironing? No, but it has to be better than allowing thoughts of a 2-1 defeat to my team’s championship rivals to swirl around in my head while my fiance works on her laptop while half-watching a drama on Channel 4.

 

I look over towards the TV and see a middle-aged man on trial in courthouse. What’s that about I wonder? Doesn’t matter, not after Dundalk 2 Cork City 1. Better iron the sleeve of this shirt.

 

I know none of this makes much sense but being upset over a team of 11 men trying to kick a ball into a net behind 11 other men, and in this instance losing, makes no sense either. It’s just a game. Can a game really engender this kind of emotion in someone though? I can rationalise most things and keep emotions fairly separate but in this instance I can’t, and I have felt this way before.

 

I watch motorbike racing and follow it relatively closely but it doesn’t particularly bother me if one racer beats another - if Rossi beats Lorenzo or vice versa. It doesn’t stop me becoming excited during the racing to the point of shouting at the television at missiles screaming across a start/finish line at insane speeds but there’s no such thing as a “loss”. If there’s great, and safe, racing, then ultimately I win as the viewer.

 



I suppose that is the crux of the matter though isn’t it? With that I am a viewer, with following Cork City I am so much more. In fact I am a part-owner of the football club through FORAS - the fans’ trust which owns the club. As such then any win, as well as any loss, is that bit personal. I know it shouldn’t be this emotional but it is. Could you call it an emotional investment?

 

Perhaps one could but an investment implies a sense that you made a conscious choice to speculate on the future of something and, essentially, bet on that. I was born into this; I am not an investor. I spent Sunday afternoons in a buggy on a muddy bank where the Donie Forde stand is in Turners Cross is now. There was no semblance of “choice” in the matter.

 

Maybe if there had been I would not have to experience these emotional lows that come with such a deflating loss to the bitterest rivals we have had in years. I suppose you could call it an emotional rollercaster but then a rollercoaster has an inevitable and predicatable end. For all of the screams, the climbs and the dips, it is safe.

 



Having been born into this, and without the will to leave as I hang on for a day when I can experience that special joy of winning a title, this is something else. A hurricane? Now there is something. A weather system so disruptive, so angry, that it can rip whole buildings apart. I feel a little like that now. Eventually though they calm down and clearer skies return.

 

Through those clearer skies I can almost peer back in time a little, thinking back on memories recent, and not so recent. Perhaps my earliest football memory is of Derek Coughlan scoring against Shelbourne in the FAI Cup Final in 1998 at Dalymount Park before the terraces behind the goal were condemned.

 

Leaning on the side of my Dad all of a sudden the ten-year old me threw a hand out to grab a barrier as a rush of people carried us toward the fence as Derek Coughlan, hands aloft, ran over to join the post-goal celebrations. My mother was on the other side of me, and my younger brother as well but where they ended up I don’t know.

 

We played the bridesmaids to Shelbourne for long enough afterwards but I can still taste the sweetness of victory as we made 2005 our year. It was like the team had finally cracked the Shelbourne code and there was now no stopping us.

 

Again to clinch the First Division title in their own back yard in Tolka Park on the last day of the season in 2011. Clambering over a pitch side fence with my Dad to join hundreds of other traveling City fans. Memories to last forever.

 

Then there are the losses, the bitter losses like Tuesday night in Oriel Park. Surely a hurricane isn’t the right metaphor. It’s a drug. It has to be because despite the lows I keep going back for more in the belief that, next time, it has be better. Come to think of it that is awfully close to the definition of insanity too.

 

It isn’t my fault though. I was exposed to this drug at a young age and I have never known life without it. You be very sure that life simply would not be the same without it either. Yes, it might be crazy to attach these emotions to a group of grown ups kicking a football around but that is just one part of it.

 

The drug is all-encompassing. It’s the people you know - the faces you see at every game. It’s the conversations at half-time. It’s the heroic fans who decide to go follow their team to the other side of the country on a Tuesday night to see a loss.

 

They’re on the same drug. I am certain they are experiencing the same ugly lows. No, it’s not an investment, not a rollercoaster either, it is a drug. As I unplug the iron and decide to go to bed and get some sleep before another day arrives the defeat hangs heavy in my mind.

 

Following a football club, especially one where you are from or one that you part-own, means that you have to taste defeat from time to time. Without it victory just would not be as sweet as it is. And there it is, the misguided hope, or unflinching optimism, or a man living with the drug of football.