Many Celtic executives have lived comfortably off the deeds of Lisbon Lion legends |
Jim Craig’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis has ignited reflections on football’s emotional power, memory, identity and the lifelong bond between clubs, players and supporters for Scottish Press Awards Columnist of the Year Kevin McKenna
You often wonder if other supporters feel the same emotion you do when it’s revealed that one of your football heroes has been struck by illness.
Curiously, you seem as affected in these moments as when it happens to one of your family.
You might only have met this player rarely, or never at all, but you’ve always somehow considered him and his team-mates to have been part of your own flesh and blood.
This is why, I think, many football clubs now host community-led reminiscence groups for those living with dementia, memory loss and social isolation.
The extraordinary benefits of this initiative were first explained to me by Ronnie Boyd, former Chairman of Albion Rovers. Mr Boyd later became a leading member of the Rovers Community Trust which hosts several social outreach programmes for people living in and around the Coatbridge area. You simply couldn’t put a monetary value on its work, especially in the immediate post-Covid period.
Mr Boyd once explained to me why football clubs’ memory groups have become a lifeline service for many of those who use them. “You often find that old football supporters’ sharpest memories spring from when they were at their happiest, or from those moments in which they were most emotionally invested.”
When you form a life-long attachment to your chosen club, you also establish a bond with those players who wore their colours when you were a child. Years after they’ve departed you check in on how they’re doing at their onward clubs.
I’m cautious here about analysing this with a class perspective: the emotional responses evoked by football don’t diminish........