Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I know of a few friends who can signpost their lives by major sporting events.
One of these guys can track the holidays of his youth with trips to various Olympics, and all the fun and frolics he’s had.
Another mate met his girlfriend at Wimbledon, eventually had his honeymoon with her there, and now goes back on family trips regularly.
The sporting event that has most aligned with my own personal life recently has been the Football World Cup.
Because it was on this day, 12 years ago, that my wife left me.
It was 1998, I had just left a job to start a new career, and I didn’t see the end of us coming at all. All rather foolish in retrospect because we had married young, had grown apart and had some very different expectations about our relationship. But like all first loves you tend to believe, even hope against hope that it will go on forever. Even while you neglect the every day realities of what is right in front of you.
That eternal myth was shattered for me that day, and I spent the next 2 weeks in a shabby hotel room in Manly watching the Cup. Distracting myself from the unthinkable. France won that year in a blaze of racially unified glory, but I remember little about it.
That may seem a rather bleak sporting association, but for me it’s not. Like any loss, it marks a turning point in a life, and the making of a new one.
It was time to play my own game and set different, personal goals. I finally started to take my career seriously, and found that I not only enjoyed advertising, but somewhat surprisingly it liked me back.
After a recovery period, I then dived back into friendships with people I had neglected during my marriage. I’m told guys do that most, focus on only their partner at the expense of others. So I enjoyed better relationships during this time, as well as the joys of hedonism, things I had never really explored as a young married guy. Suddenly, anything seemed possible.
I also re-discovered my own body in some ways. I have always loved sport but I found that through running and fitness and yoga that achieving a fit, healthy body was re-invigorating. Of course change in these circumstances is easy in some ways, because there is only forward. You are not in a team sport any more, there is only you to make it happen, and that is frightening and liberating all at the same time.
But it’s also addictive.
I remember well a colleague of mine who commented on my apparent renaissance, as I came back to work. Good old ‘Prince’ Caspian. He said be careful of your single life, “you’ll get used to it, and it’ll be hard to go back”. He was right of course. So focused you become on your own needs, development and goals that the focus on ‘me’ slowly, inexorably, replaces any thought of ‘we’.
Which is not to say I had given up on love. If the singles among us cannot be romantic, by hoping for love (or love again), who else is left to keep that flame going? But truth be told I was getting worse at sticking things out in relationships. Preferring perhaps to run, before the threat of being pushed away again.
So by the time of World Cup 2002 in Japan and Korea, I remember ending my relationship with the wonderful Stephanie. She said she just couldn’t crack through to find me. Like Korea in that Cup I had tried valiantly but fallen well short of the final effort. A good effort but lacking in the skills, desire or willpower to make it all the way.
Move forward 4 years later and I could contrast 2 moments of the 2006 World Cup Campaign with my own relationship program. First there was the qualification of the Australian team for the first time in many years, after coming agonizingly close so often. I remember my girlfriend Bev and I, jumping up and down on the couch after the winning penalty kick, on our way as well, it seemed. And then by the time of the World Cup Finals only 6 months later, there I was again having slipped (fallen/jumped) back to my single life.
I had convincingly told myself that Bev and I were not right for each other, and really we weren’t meant to be. But something inside me knew that I had not truly committed myself to the team game again. I had lost some of the nerve to keep fighting for coupledom.
Looking back now over these years, I’ve no doubt that as the World Cups loomed, it re-enforced this new game plan in my mind. The memory of those dark days was enough to make me want to pull the chord for another solo jump. It’s quite a painful and sad realization.
But perhaps World Cup South Africa 2010 marks the beginning of a different era.
It’s a decent life I’ve re-built in these last 12 years. And I am acutely aware of the danger of idealizing marriage or relationships. It would be easy to play the referendum game (read the linked article, it’s brilliant), comparing myself to my contemporaries and wishfully thinking things would be better if I had what they had. There is so much to be grateful for and happy about in this life now.
But at some point, the losses of the past need to be buried. And we all need to score more than points for ourselves. This single player, having exhausted all his moves and with perhaps his best matches behind him, is tired of that narrow game plan.
Like the ageing footballer approaching retirement, the playbook is full and there are enough crafty moves to keep going. But you start to glimpse a life beyond the game, and think of bigger things.
That’s what this tournament means to me. Just football. Just moving forward.
Enjoy your World Cup. I plan to remember this one for the right reasons.
Cheers, Rob
