Falling in Love

It's probably fair to say that over the last few years my passion for football has not been what it used to be.  I would never say I'd fallen out of love with the game, however the relationship has gone through a rocky patch which, only now when reflecting on this, I realise how far apart we'd grown. 

There's no solitary reason and no single turning point that I can identify.  What I can say is that, like many long term relationships, it's been a gradual drift that day to day hasn't been apparent, but the passage of time revealed a considerable gap.

It probably started around six years ago - the time that I gave up my season ticket at Tynecastle.  There were a number of reasons for this, not least the pressures of time and the desire to see more of my (very) young son.  The surrender of my seat in isolation would not have been an issue, but it coincided with a change of ownership at Hearts and the introduction of a number of new foreign imports.  Many of these had a positive impact on the club, few did not.  However, what it did mark was the evolution of a team to one with which I had little connection - and no longer seeing them every other week, I lost the opportunity to address this.

This break-down in my relationship with my club was only really the start.  In the following years I drifted away from football in general.  I felt that off-field antics cast a dark shadow as much as the on-field theatrics.  The game itself became a peripheral figure in the soap opera around which it was set.  One week the focus would be on the role of agents in the game, the next would be an in-depth analysis of why new Far-Eastern cash was better for a club than old Western money.  We'd discuss at length whether the referees were applying the wrong interpretation of the right rules, or the right interpretation of rules that were clearly wrong.  Endless hours would be spent debating the moral minefield of indiscretion and infidelity of manys a player or manager. 

Football was no longer about the game.  Or maybe more appropriately, the game was about much more than just football.

It is ironic, then, that I have rediscovered football in a season which has already encapsulated many of these traits.  And having reflected on this, it's because I've remembered why I loved football in the first place.

I played football from as young as I can remember, but it was 1986 - at the age of ten - that I really fell for the game.  Hearts had just endured 'that' season and Maradona's World Cup in Mexico lit up my life.  Scotland were wearing the infamous strip with those tight hooped shorts, and Liverpool were dominant in the first division with King Kenny at the helm.

There's so much I remember, all of which with enthusiasm and delight, but there's so much I've forgotten too.  English clubs were no longer welcome in Europe and you couldn't watch a live game without an eight-foot wire fence between you and the players.  Seats were for either the old or the wealthy as - it would appear - were the toilets.  We were a year on from the stadium disasters of Bradford City and Heysel, and still three years ahead of Hilsborough - the seminal moment in British football.  In the four years around the start of my love affair, the better part of 200 people died going to watch football.  There is no debate that football is in a better place now.

I loved the game when it was ugly, so I should surely love it now that it's beautiful once more.  But when I fell in love with the game, I fell in love with the game.  It was what the players did on the pitch that counted.  The manager of the club mattered little and the ownership less still.  In our world, the bitterness of rivalries were no more than playground teases.  The boots a player was wearing were important; the 'birds' he was dating were not.

It is only now as I witness the next generation falling for the game that I remember why I fell for the game.  And it's the game that counts.  My (still quite) young son shows an enthusiasm that echoes mine 25 years ago. Star players, great goals and - dare I say it - the excitement of a new strip are what matters.  The rest is just bubble-wrap.

That is what is important.  It's the package in the middle that counts.  It's about the game.  While it all evolves from one decade to the next - from one generation to the next - it is still one ball between 22 players on the pitch.  To lose sight of that, is to lose the love.

As I stand at the start of one of the biggest challenges of my life, I'm happy that I've managed to re-ignite my relationship with the beautiful game.  I'm delighted that The EuroChampsChallenge is about all those aspects which we love about the game; we will leave it to the others to get tangled up in the wrapping.

But more than anything, I'm happy once more to be able to say: I love football.  And for that - thank-you my son.