We don’t think much about sports mattering.
Sports are a pastime, a game. I think I have seen sporting rivalries create more enemies out of would be friends than any other single thing in the world. Nationality, career or sexual preference all cause tension or strife in some fringe cases (we all have that racist uncle of acquaintance on Facebook), but most of these things don’t phase your everyday person. If you talk about being gay in Kentucky, that will make you an outcast, but start talking about Christian Laettner there and you will be run out of town on a rail.
All through the NBA finals I have had an explosion of angry trash talk from my sports loving friends, none of whom have ever lived in, or in most cases visited, Cleveland or Oakland.
It’s sports, it’s a rivalry and we have to pick a side. With picking a side we now automatically have a reason to hate everyone who chose differently than us.
It’s a part of being human, or even alive. We are animals. We have a tribe. These people are with us and those people are against us. In history (and far too much now that we would all like to admit) we have used that us vs. them mentality for disputes over religion, nationality, skin color and everything inbetween.
On top of that we all have that club or that team that we all love to hate. They just get under our skin. Yankee fans, Duke fans, Penguin fans especially. Or, if you live in London it’s Millwall fans.
The small club on the Southeast side of London go by the nickname of Lions. They have a song they sing at all their matches and a saying that runs just as true in-between. “Nobody likes us and we don’t care!” It’s fair and fitting. In London where surrounding you are some of the most impressive and dominant clubs in Europe, sides like: Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, it take a real loyalty to continue to sing that song and show up to watch your considerably smaller side.
Millwall won promotion this year from League 1 to the Championship, the second tier in English football.
There is a part of having a team that we support that becomes a part of who we are. Especially when we face adversity. It is more than just paying for tickets, buying overpriced stadium food and cheering our hearts out for our hopefully not ill fated team. It is in more than just the jerseys that we wear, the way we spend our time and the flags we fly from our houses and car windows. There is loyalty and strength that comes from living and dying with your team.
That loyalty and that strength is real, it’s tangible and it’s the reason that sports are and can be used for good.
It’s what was on display on the night of June 3rd in a man named Roy Larner. In a restaurant by a bridge in London 3 terrorist wielding knives entered to continue a heinous attack. This next part is mostly in his own words and is taken from The Sun newspaper.
“He told The Sun from hospital: “They had these long knives and started shouting about Allah. Then it was, ‘Islam, Islam, Islam’.
“Like an idiot I shouted back at them. I thought, ‘I need to take the p*** out of these b******s’.”
“I took a few steps towards them and said, ‘F*** you, I’m Millwall’. So they started attacking me.
“I stood in front of them trying to fight them off. Everyone else ran to the back.
“I was on my own against all three of them, that’s why I got hurt so much.
“It was just me, trying to grab them with my bare hands and hold on. I was swinging.
“I got stabbed and sliced eight times. They got me in my head, chest and both hands. There was blood everywhere.
“They were saying, ‘Islam, Islam!’. I said again, ‘F*** you, I’m Millwall!’
“It was the worst thing I could have done as they carried on attacking me.
“Luckily, none of the blows were straight at me or I’d be dead.”
His selfless bravery was no shock to mum Phyllis Larner, 78.
She said: “He’s fearless, my son. He’ll give as good as he gets.
“He’s quite nippy and lippy and wouldn’t back down from a fight.
“He wouldn’t care who it was or if they had a knife or gun.”
Roy told how he braved the attackers’ blades to stop them massacring other drinkers.
He said: “All three were on me. I couldn’t hold them back. Two got past me and I was one-on-one.
“He kept slashing and hacking away at me. They were stabbing and slashing at me as I waved my arms for 20 or 30 seconds.”
Despite his injuries, he said he followed them outside.
“It wasn’t until I was in a police car,” said Mr Larner, “That I realised I was in a bad way. I’d been sliced up all over.”
“I didn’t think of my safety at the time,” he added. “I’d had four or five pints — nothing major.
“I can handle myself. But I was out with an old person and it was out of order.””
Close quote.
Roy Larner is being called the Lion of London Bridge. A title that comes from Millwall being nicknamed the Lions. It is a rare thing for a person to literally die with the name of his team on his lips. We seem to hear so many stories of the negativity in the world. We know that bad that sports can do, but you know, they really can improve us and our world.
There are more than a few Lion’s of London Bridge among us.
Read the full reference article at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3731817/defiant-battlecry-of-hero-footie-fan-hailed-the-lion-of-london-bridge-after-single-handedly-fighting-machete-terror-trio-with-bare-fists/
Really do, it’s well worth a read.