By Denzil McDaniel 

The late Bill Shankly, inspirational former manager of Liverpool Football Club, was quoted as saying: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I’m disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it’s much, much more serious than that!”

Whether he actually said it or not is a moot point, but the quote gives an insight into how millions of fans worldwide lose all perspective when it comes to whichever their team is. They feel so much a part of multi-million organisations that they refer to “we” when talking about their club.

What made so many people seemingly lose all sense when it came to travelling to Madrid a couple of weeks ago without a ticket for the Champions League final, spending a fortune and taking days to travel just so they could watch the match on television in the company of other people in replica shirts.?

It you’re a football nut, you get this. If not, you may well wonder about this parallel universe. But you’re missing something glorious!

The positive impact that football and sport generally has on people’s lives is worth considering.

Liverpool is a case in point, and the sense of pride and identity that the city’s two major football clubs brings to its people is something that could never be achieved by forced political initiatives. It’s a sense of belonging that clubs everywhere engender, and although many have fan bases now throughout the world, the connection with the club’s home city is in its DNA and flows out from the hub through history.

Take Liverpool. In the 1980s it’s no exaggeration to say that Merseyside was a region in crisis. Margaret Thatcher had become Prime Minister at the end of an economically disastrous 70s in which Liverpool was especially hard hit.

It had become a bleak, depressing city despite it’s vibrant, creative, humorous, fun-loving people. Shankly’s successful team, in which the tough Scot of mining stock forged a bond with the fans and produced teams of quality and excitement, was one of the few shafts of light.

Bricked-up shops and businesses were everywhere, debris was strewn in decaying housing estates, few people had jobs. In 1981, while London watched the splendour of the Charles and Diana wedding, Liverpool was in despair.

The television series “Boys from the Blackstuff” summed up the mood of men, without hope of providing for their families, losing their self-respect and being driven to the edge. The only people doing decent trade were the pub owners with regular redundancy parties.

The Toxteth riots of 1981 were described as an “explosion of anger.”

Thatcher visited the city – in a bulletproof car with protesters shouting at her through a security ring of steel as she couldn’t wait to get out of the place.

Did she have any empathy for the desperate plight of the people of Liverpool?

The answer came from her right-hand man, Norman Tebbitt, at the Tory conference when he recalled his own father’s unemployment. “He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work.”

Liverpool would’ve need a lot of bikes, with youth unemployment running at 90 per cent in some areas.

It was grim. Yet, football provided an outlet. Anfield and Goodison Park on alternative weekends were heaving with fans watching fantastic football with classy players.

Here’s a remarkable statistic: Between 1980 and 1990, in the 11 years that the English top-flight league was contested, the title came to the city of Liverpool nine times; seven to Liverpool and twice to Everton. Both clubs won European trophies before hooliganism saw English clubs banned from Europe. And also in the 80s, the Liverpool-Everton derby was contested in Wembley cup finals with fans joining together to chant “Merseyside, Merseyside” in a show of defiance to the authorities.

In a decade when times were really, really tough, the value of enjoying football and showing class in adversity shone through.

It’s no wonder that the Liverpool community fought together for years at the injustice over 96 fans being killed at Hillsborough.

Social historians and academics who study the period are firm in the belief that football in the 1980s in Liverpool saved lives by helping people with their mental health issues.

The human stories continued in 2019. I’m not much of a fan of Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, but after the final you had to be moved to see him emotionally embracing his dad, who’d recovered from throat cancer. And what a wonderful sight to see Liverpool fan Sean Cox in the Republic recover sufficiently from a serious assault at a match to join his family at home singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

And as regards the effects on society, it’s been revealed that Mo Salah’s hero status in Liverpool has resulted in a reduction of 20 per cent in hate crime against Muslims in the city (though there’s still the underlying worry that such hate crime exists at such a level).

Anyway, even though as a Spurs fan I was deeply disappointed at my team’s final defeat, I’m still a football fan so good luck to Liverpool, the same as I’ve said fair play to all teams that I’ve enjoyed watching in their success from Manchester United to Brazil to whoever. Who could forget the Holy Trinity of Law, Best and Charlton or Celtic’s Lisbon Lions.

Yeah, I know, rivalry can spill over the edge sometimes, but sport is fantastic for the joy it brings and the benefits to society.

Now, I know this article is very complimentary about Liverpool and some of you from other clubs will be thinking it’s me that’s taken leave of my senses. But it’s just one example of sports throughout the world, from ice hockey to baseball to many other sports which have stories of triumph and disaster which capture the imagination.

For years in this part of the world, I’ve always felt that junior football kept people together across the divide when the Troubles were at their height.

Sport benefits the individual in physical and mental health; it teaches discipline, and teamwork to young people, shows the benefit of hard work and overcoming adversity and fosters great friendships.

It also brings a feelgood factor to people, nowhere more so than here in Fermanagh this year. The young men at St. Michael’s College who won MacRory and Hogan cups will remember 2019 when they are old men, and still fondly remember the people they forged a close bond with.

Anyone who followed Ballinamallard United’s remarkable journey to the Irish Cup final will remember that thrill; there’s Enniskillen’s rugby history makers, Lee Johnston’s superb TT win, and many other successes in a range of sports and ages which we in Fermanagh felt a reflective glow of glory.

The passion of sport is fantastic and, in my opinion, the benefit it brings to people and society generally isn’t sufficiently recognised.