My hypothesis is this - you can dream of something your whole life, get it, and then not want it any more. I must stress, this hasn't happened to me yet, but it might do. Soon.
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| He's one of our own...... |
See, I'm a Middlesbrough fan, and my beloved club have just appointed my boyhood hero - Tony Mowbray - as manager. For those uninitiated in football, that's a big deal - honest.
I'm delighted. Mowbray - affectionately known as Mogga - has come home, and it's a sentiment widely shared amongst Middlesbrough people.
"He's one of our own," the Boro fans at Carrow Road (Boro were playing Norwich away) were singing on Saturday. And he is. He's Boro through and through and that's why it's magical that he has finally been given the top job at the club. Boro blood pumps through his veins, as it does ours, and we love him for it.
But part of me is terrified. It may be true that we are currently third bottom in the second tier of English Football. It may be true that after over a decade in the top-flight, it would now seem that things can't get much worse. Unfortunately, it may also be true that we have made the wrong appointment. Perhaps it won't work out?
Living in Norwich, and taking a little bit of interest in how Norwich City Football Club fare, I know that when they appointed their club legend, Bryan Gunn, as manager, things went spectacularly pear-shaped. Gunny was sacked amid rumours of behind-closed-doors bust ups and his football career and reputation at Carrow Road have both been forever-tainted as a result. He's still loved in Norwich, but he's also remembered as a spectacular failure, and usually those memories are expressed as disparaging jokes.
The same couldn't happen to our beloved Mogga, could it? Well, yes actually, it could. Not because he isn't an experienced manager (he is, which is where he and Gunny differ), but because football is football. The best manager in the world can have a barren run - just ask Arsene Wenger (Arsenal manager) when he last won a trophy. And while Wenger is respected as one of the most talented managers in world football, and has the Arsenal board's unequivocal backing, the same probably couldn't be said for Mogga.
Yes, he's getting back-slaps from Lamby and Gibbo (Keith Lamb, Boro Chief Exec and Steve Gibson, Boro Chairman) now, but in three months time if results haven't gone to plan? Worse, in May, if we're still in the bottom three? Mogga would be a goner, and probably rightly so.
Were would that leave my dreams?
Well, it'd leave them spent. At 28, one of my most cherished boyhood dreams would be dead and gone. It's something that has helped to get me through the ups (signing great players, getting promoted, getting to cup finals) and downs (getting relegated, getting liquidated, losing cup finals) of my life as a Boro fan; the thought that one day Mogga would lead Boro in to a bright new era.
And here he is. No pressure, eh Mogga? The man literally holds my childhood in his hands.
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| Fighting Spirit? Mogga as Ivan Drago |
If he should fail, then what have I got left to believe in? I'll be forced to grow up. I'll have to get a career (instead of the job I've got now), I'll have to start doing something with my money (instead of spending it) and I'll have to get a proper girlfriend (instead of being picky and hoping to finally meet THE ONE).
Because that's what it's all about: it's hope, it's dreams, it's the idea that one day you might be in the crowd when inexplicably there are no subs left and you're picked out of the thousands of screaming fans to come on and score the winning goal in the Cup Final. It's elation and it's jubilation. It's the madness of believing in the impossible. It's just... everything.
So come on Mogga. Do it for me, and all those like me. Do it for Teesside. Make us proud once more to be Boro.
Most importantly, do it for dreams.
