Betrayal & Big Open Spaces

I was up in the night on Sunday, I’m not sure what awoke me, but I found myself in bed, alive with emotional energy and the sense that I had interrupted my brain in the course of a vast resorting of information and ideas. I’m on holiday, away from home, in a new, big open space by the sea, and my mind is taking the opportunity to process the backlog I’ve accrued by hurtling around, creating business for myself over the last two months or so, which have disappeared so quickly.

In this heightened state, my own words from my last article rang in my head: “the power to truly let me down”. Only then did I register the intensity of that sentiment, and I half-consciously mused how peculiar it is that strangers have such a hold on us, that those who choose to play sport carry around so great a responsibility.

I had felt almost overwhelmed on Saturday night, full of passion, upset, love of the game — and that pinch of betrayal. I wonder now, as well, how echoes of real life, hurtful episodes of being let down by someone stood in the same room as me recur when football fandom goes wrong.

The first time this happened to me, I was distraught, Leeds’ brilliant 2018/2019 season culminating in a mad, devastating collapse — losing the play off semi final to Frank Lampard’s Derby County.

It strikes me that many of the Lionesses’ most fervent followers are yet to experience the crushing disappointment of their team being subjected to a cruel twist of fate, or worse, underperforming.

Being, as I am, in Leah Williamson’s school year, I note too how the pain of letting others down resonates with me. The idea that, like Lucy Bronze, I could be obsessively hard-working and unequivocally well-intentioned, and still miss the mark.

In light of these early-hours revelations, who would be a pro footballer or, indeed, any fallible person at all?