For the love of sport

There’s a lot to be said about sport, but very few words are spoken about its connection with love. Most people associate the word love with chick flicks, Jane Austen novels, and stereotypically feminine spheres that don’t appear to mesh with the hyper-masculine arena of sports. But it’s not true.

Without love, you can’t have sport.

Where I’m from, it’s football. Sheffield is a two-club city; Wednesday versus United, blue versus red, Owls versus Blades. I learned the points of the compass by the phrase “Never Ever Support Wednesday,” a phrase which circulated my Primary School and ingrained a hatred of The Owls in me from the age of six. At the time, football was of no interest to me whatsoever, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t choose the sport or the team I supported – that was a matter down to my place of birth and the club my family supported.

Move further out of my village, and it might be rugby that you grew up with. Or cricket (in which case, I’m sorry). The place you’re from has a big impact on the sport and club you grow up with, so you might even call it fate.

All three of these sports have roots so deep in the UK that they’re a part of the culture. Like I said, I didn’t watch football as a child, which meant I had very little care for Sheffield United other than the joy I felt when Captain Blade visited my primary school to let us take penalties, but you’re damned straight I would argue with any kid who claimed to be a Wednesday supporter. It’s part of your character, part of your identity.

Why, though?

The sense of community that sport creates is positively unparalleled. You can feel the atmosphere at any match. People deck themselves out in almost tribal regalia, face paint, matching colours. They come together in swaying throngs of people thousands strong. They sing and chant, laugh together and cry together, and even if you fit in nowhere else in the world, that crowd can feel like your home.

Nowadays, I think the story of being born into your sport is less common. What with social mobility and globalisation, fans flock from all over the world to support the same teams and athletes. Some people think that this damages the sense of community, but for me, it creates an even stronger one. No matter your background, you and a total stranger have invested yourselves into not just the same sport, but the same team, and that’s a bond you can’t break.

For me, arriving at your sport even later in life is perhaps more fateful than being born into it. It means you’ve had a chance to form your character without it, and that makes the attachment to it all the more strong.

Football found me later. I was at University (in Scotland, ironically, and you’ll see why in a moment) when it came back to me. After resisting it all those years in an attempt to distinguish myself from my football-mad brothers, I felt a pull that I just couldn’t fight anymore. And it was England.

The World Cup ropes in everyone, football-lover or not. Flags line the streets, even hanging out of car windows, beer gardens throughout the country are filled with people supporting the same team for once, and in 2018, there was an immeasurable buzz that we were going to achieve something. Spoiler alert: we didn’t (it’s England, so one should never really have hoped). But what that World Cup did do is get me back into football.

After that, I found myself engaging with the following season, watching matches and re-learning the rules, in part thanks to my boyfriend’s wonderful demonstration of the offside rule using household condiments.

Without a background playing football or a geographical connection to the sport (after all, by this point, I had left Sheffield and vowed to never, ever go back, not even if somebody dragged me kicking and screaming), and living in Scotland with no Sheffield games on the television anyway because both clubs were terrible, I was only really exposed to the top flight. Then, one day, I saw it.

I saw the sea of red at Anfield, heard the ballad of You’ll Never Walk Alone. I can only describe the feeling as love at first sight.

I knew my grandparents on my dad’s side had a soft spot for Liverpool despite being Wednesday fans; my eldest brother (an outlier of a Wednesday fan in my otherwise Blades-heavy family) had an appreciation for the Reds, too; and my maternal grandfather always spoke fondly of them.

Grandad Gordon actually lived across the road from the Hillsborough stadium. He lived there almost his whole life. And yes, he was there in 1989. I have first-hand accounts from that day.

Both sides of my family are Irish in part. Both passed through Liverpool and at least one half lingered there for some time. Both carried strong connections to the city through generations and generations, with nothing but kind words to say.

And I was finally starting to understand why.

After that, I was in too deep. When you have a crush, you search up all their social media accounts and scroll back to the beginning to find out about their past. I did that, but with a football team. I watched every YouTube video, read every Wikipedia article, scoured the Players’ Tribune. This club that had previously existed on my peripherals is now absolutely everything to me.

Some people believe that football fans who come from a different city than the club they support aren’t legitimate. But let me tell you, that’s so far from the truth.

Once, when I was discussing my newfound love for sports with my family, my brother asked our eldest sibling (the practically-Liverpool fan) why he had such a soft spot for the Reds. “You’re a Wednesday fan, I dunno why you care about Liverpool,” he said with an eye roll. And Matt just shrugged with a smile and said, “It’s romantic.”

I couldn’t agree more.

A little later in my life, I also discovered the sport of Formula One, and the same thing happened. Ferrari – another team synonymous with the colour red – captured my attention. Both teams have several things in common, aside from their striking colouration. Historic clubs, with their fair share of ups and downs, and an army of fans that would do anything in the world to support them.

Will Buxton once said that if you ask a child to draw you a car, they’ll colour it in red, and that’s everything you need to know about Ferrari. Sebastian Vettel himself said that “Everybody is a Ferrari fan. Even if they’re not, they are a Ferrari fan. Even if you go to the Mercedes guys, even if they say that ‘Oh yeah, Mercedes is the greatest brand in the world’, they are Ferrari fans.” It’s an army. The Italian fans that swarm Monza and forge a sea of red, waving their prancing horse flags enamoured me completely, and I wanted to be a part of it.

And before anyone tells me I’m a glory hunter, my ice hockey team is the Toronto Maple Leafs.

My waffle thus far has been to demonstrate how people come to sport and why they might stay, but this doesn’t explain why I see so much love. I think the relationship between sports fans and the sports or athletes they love is the most romantic love story in the entire world.

First of all, there’s the meet-cute. Born a mile from the club ground or not, there’s always an exact moment in time when you discover the sport, witness something incredible. And once you’re in, you’re in.

The sport finds you, the club chooses you. Once you decide to love it in return, it becomes a transactional relationship of love and take that locks you into an emotional rollercoaster – and it’s the best ride in the world.

You invest everything you have into it, because you love it. Your time spent watching and learning, your money spent on tickets, merchandise, and streaming platforms. A portion of your life is dedicated to this sport; you have to give yourself to it.

In return, the club attempts to satisfy your emotional needs. They strive to make the fans happy, to foster a family that’s content and supportive and within which everybody thrives.

Within this relationship, you will never say die. There will always be ups and downs in sports. It doesn’t matter if your club gets relegated two seasons in a row, if they are experiencing financial difficulties, or if they just sold your favourite player. The low moments hurt, but you hold on.

The love you have for your sport, for your club and community, is unconditional. When it gets bad, it might hurt, but you will never say die. In the lowest of the low moments, you never leave. And no matter how much you are hurting, you offer your support in every way you can until it gets better again.

That’s love.

Then, one day, it gets better. You start winning again. In the best-case scenarios, you win a trophy, and silverware is as good as it gets. Those are my favourite days, because it’s the best feeling in the entire world. When you win, it feels like you’re walking on air. That feeling? It doesn’t get more romantic than that.

But love is never just about the good times; it’s about sticking around when things get tough, through the heartbreaks and the losses. It’s about holding onto hope when logic tells you to let go. And believe me, I cried for two whole days when Bobby Firmino left Liverpool. Three for Jurgen Klopp.

That’s the beauty of sport—it teaches us resilience, devotion, and the joy of shared triumphs. It’s a lifelong relationship.

So, whether it’s a last-minute equalizer, a penalty shootout, or simply the buzz of the crowd on a matchday, sport has a way of bringing us all together in love. And just like love, it’s imperfect, unpredictable, and sometimes utterly maddening—but that’s why we can’t live without it.

True love is seldom perfect. But it’s worth every sacrifice. And I know to my very core that I’ll never walk alone.