New dawns? We’ve seen a few.
And we’ve seen the deepening twilight that has followed far too quickly.
But that can’t and won’t stop us heralding the light – chinks in the darkness can be blinding for those who’ve peered through gloom for decades.
Not, as some in the southern-based media will claim, because we’re fickle.
No. The fickle would have given up years ago and put a Man U shirt on top of the kid’s Christmas shopping list.
The fickle aren’t counted in their tens of thousands nor do they revere players such as Shack, Hurley, and Rowell – former players that the rest of football asks quizzically “who?”.
We’re not fickle. We’re desperate.
We cling to a few memories like drowning sailors to a lifebelt. Those memories bind those who were there and inspire those who weren’t to hope that maybe, just maybe, they too will see their day and their team in the sun.
Can Martin O’Neill succeed where many have failed.
We don’t know.
But where a few days ago their was despondency, anger and resignation there is, once again, hope.
Outsiders can think and say what they want. They do not understand.
But ask those who stood on the terraces of Hillsborough in 1973 after Arsenal were vanquished and the impossible dream of the Twin Towers was realized.
They’ll remind you how they refused to move, calling out, not for individual players, but for a man who had somehow turned that particular dawn into blazing sunlight.
And when he died those same fans kicked in and helped build him a statue.
One trophy. That is all it took.
Fickle?
I don’t think so.
Sharkey’s Shadow
(Our Canadian Correspondent)