Dual defeats for Rovers and England fuel misery of the sporting kind

Sometimes I envy people who are not interested in sport.  They seem to be few and far between but now and then you run into someone who would think that the Ashes is a brand of firelighter or would be totally oblivious to the build-up  to a footballing World Cup.  What a cushy life.  It simply cuts out all the suffering from defeats that your team/country has to inflict on you. The only stress you have to endure as a non-sporting person is what kind of salad to take to an Aussie barbecue.  I do actually morph into indifference when it comes to “solo” sports. Rafa Nadal seems a nice bloke but I don’t go into emotional meltdown if he loses during a tennis grand slam. He doesn’t represent me.  Or where I am from.  Meanwhile, Tiger Woods is a rich and obnoxious human being but he won’t go without if he misses the cut of some obscure but well-funded golf tournament in any particular money-crazed outpost of the modern world.  There are also some team sports that leave me cold. Basketball. What’s that all about? Points a-go-go every single second. American overkill. Much ado about nowt.  So if that’s where it finished, I’d be fine.  But no… All my life, the big two – football and cricket – have loomed as emotional thermometers. I would love to work out a graph of how joy and suffering have scored during my sporting dependencies of Blackburn Rovers, Lancashire and England. There are cursory diversions such as Aussie Rules sides Sydney Swans, Norwood Redlegs and, in baseball,  San Francisco Giants. But they don’t count in the big picture. I even used to watch Balmain in Sydney where rugby league reigns, via the Orange Grove pub in Leichardt. But they were forced into amalgamation with the Magpies of Western Suburbs. It was never the same for me. It is wacky though how you seem to remember the bad days rather than the emotional victories. This week has been a classic. Despair with bells on. Rovers made a rare appearance on Setanta in the FA Cup replay with Manchester City. I loathe City for reasons which I may explain at a later stage.  I tuned in and had to witness a 5-0 mauling. It was not unexpected but very unfair. Under our idiot Indian owners, Rovers have gone from a stable Premier League club to a Championship basket case within no time at all. Only now are we heading towards some form of stability. City were kept out until half-time stoppage seconds. After that, things fell apart and City looked like they could go further ahead at will. It was awful. Rovers had actually played okay, but it doesn’t read like that. 5-0 is not good. And neither is 4-1. That was the next rout at Nottingham Forest over the weekend. I only have those highlights to look forward to on Setanta. Nine goals leaked  in a week. We are on the road to recovery – I think? However, the play-offs may have to wait.  I was pretty distraught. But the real mood churner was still to come after the City carnage. I have been down-playing the England one-day cricketing campaign in the wake of the Ashes surrender. But I still care. And there we were in Brisbane on Friday night. A win at last within our reach.  At 244 with just one wicket to fall, chasing 301, surely England would wrap up a long-awaited minor success. What James Faulkner did thereafter left me in a state of disbelief.  In an Aussie summer of one disaster after another, I was experiencing a new form of numbness. Losing is horrible I know, but losing when it seems impossible to do so is detrimental to the thought process.  I’m sure the England one-day squad are now as mentally shattered as the Ashes fall guys. It’s been a sudden and painful experience. The ensuing Sydney slaughter was so predictable I agreed to turn over the TV to watch Midsomer Murders instead.  The series which makes murder totally trivial was more preferable to a real life working-over. To see the intellectually-challenged David Warner in full flow was too much to take.  Watching someone be bludgeoned to death by a gigantic piece of cheese was lightweight by comparison. There seriously can’t be many people left in those idyllic villages around Midsomer. So if has come to this… Just two one-dayers to go. Oh, and the Twenty-20s. No wonder Kevin Pietersen looked quite at ease in the stands at the Chelsea v Man United  game. Well out of the way. Trust him to go and watch two poseur clubs. Out here,  I foresee more suffering. The final one-day episode will be in Adelaide.  I s’pose I had better go. Just to show loyalty to a losing England cause. Sport eh, don’t ya just love it…