The Linfield-Sevco fulcrum continues to amaze and entertain me. The news that the Ibrox club were letting the North of Ireland club have free reign of their stadium and that Sevco fans have been trying to buy tickets for Celtic Park is hugely amusing.
Haven’t Sevco fans suffered enough trauma? Why are they tying themselves to a club which come Wednesday is going to be ripe for a skelping? A team that’s already half out of Europe? Wasn’t one European humbling enough for these people? Why do they long for another one? It’s pretty desperate when you’re trailing along on the coat-tails of such a team.
Is this Masochist Theatre?
Do these people embrace suffering?
I enjoy reading, and about 20 years ago I took a stab at the Marquis De Sade; I read Justine: The Misfortunes of Virtue and 120 Days of Sodom. The books were neither flowery not especially dirty; in fact, they were tame compared to the work of certain horror writers I enjoy like Shaun Huston, James Herbert and Richard Laymon. But in essence they are about the pleasure some people derive from pain; the experience of it and the inflicting of it both.
From his work comes the contemporary word sadism.
I think I must be a little sadistic.
I do take pleasure in the misery of the Peepul.
I am just a little baffled by the way they go seeking it out.
When I heard David Healy tell the press that he and his team would be flying the flag for Ibrox in light of Sevco’s exit from Europe at the hands of the Luxembourgers, I really did laugh uproariously. Because I knew deep down that people at Ibrox would be alright with that. That their fans would get behind it. And I thought “My God haven’t they suffered enough?”
(I am joking. They can never suffer enough.)
This feels significant to me, actually.
This feels like the point where some of the Sevco fans start to drift towards other loyalties.
That they can so easily slide into the Linfield-Celtic fight shows how little light and joy there is in following their own club right now. It’s a small step towards a greater chipping away; I predict that if we draw Chelsea later in the competition you’ll see an even bigger drift towards someone else’s corner.
(That link, by the way, is tenuous at best. I’d go as far as to say it’s a case of rampant wishful thinking, except for on the fringes of Chelsea’s far right. I know a few Chelsea fans who have no love at all for the floundering Newco.)
An entire generation of them grew up as nothing more than glory chasers. They’ve never known anything else. I said the other day I couldn’t understand why Linfield fans – who’s club are champions and who are, technically, still in Europe – would be embracing Sevco … but I understand exactly why Sevco fans are embracing them.
The Peepul are starting to do walking away.
And if that happens their club really is in the darkest place it’s ever been.
