I was thinking about what to write this week.
Its been a decent week for Nairn County after all, the fans and players all very positive around the battling performance at Arbroath last week, all looking forward to the game against an improving Lossiemouth team at the weekend… then on Thursday our house went on fire and my dad, 83, ends up in hospital. He’s not bad thank god, it could have been a lot worse, but the house is a mess. The shock of it tends to put football in perspective.
However there’s a flip side to that view that football is not important. He’s sitting in A&E on Thursday night, and he’s not talking about his brush with mortality, neither is he talking about the flames or damage to the house.
No he’s talking about what a good captain Big Mo Morrison is for the County, how he thinks Alan Pollock is doing a great job on the right wing and how Conor Gethins is the most lethal striker he’s seen in Nairn colours since the days of Davy Johnston.
It took his mind off things. It didn’t take away the scare he had, or the physical side but his love of football, of Nairn County in particular, helped him deal with a traumatic situation. For a while we didn’t have to think about the horrible stuff that had happened,
Shankly once said football isn’t a matter of life and death it’s more important than that. Shankly was wrong, but yet he was also right also. Football isn’t worth one person’s life, but it certainly enhances lives.
Just as much as it divides it brings together.
For every word of hate and bile there’s an act of kindness and solidarity with a fellow fan. What it can also be is the string that binds the generations together, from fathers to sons across the centuries.
Nairn County are a century old this year, across that century is the golden strand of support that binds us fans, committee and players together. The importance of football is that it runs through life and death. The strand is constant… and it helps.