SpawnPoint

Well my provincial football team were in the Scottish Cup final on saturday.

Dumfermline are not a massive club here in Scottish football (soccer) with an average home crowd of 5000 or so. We were playing Glasgow Celtic who are one of the largest followed and richest clubs in Europe regularly playing to nearly 60000 fans. They had won the league title and reached the last 16 in the European Champions League :o

We, despite our size, sold some 15500 tickets for the "grand day out" at our national stadium and i have to admit as to being rather on edge as we decked ourselves out in our black and white "war paint" shirts, scarves and flags and headed for the hallowed turf of Hampden.

The sea of black and white at our end of the stadium coupled with our band and bag pipers made me swell with pride at the fact "MY" team was here on this special day. The fact that we had finished bottom of the league and been relegated from the top tier of football some 2 weeks before paled into insignificance at that time.

The game commenced and we sang and cheered and chanted our heads off throughout the first half and were unlucky not to be leading at the half-time interval. The deafening silence from the 30000+ so called "greatest fans in the world" at the opposing end of the stadium was both funny and eerie.

With 5 minutes to go and with the cruelest of luck the opposition scored a scrappy goal and in one instant 15500 hearts were cruelly broken. I have to admit that it was difficult to hold back the tears of disappointment at full time and realising that, although the guys had played some of their best all season it was all to no avail.

I'm proud to be an avid fan of them. I'm proud that through all the odds we made the final. I'm proud of the way we played. They gave their best and no one could be faulted in their performance.

It's a cruel lesson in life. Sometimes, even when you play above yourself, fate has a way of bringing you crashing back down to earth.

Live your life to the fullest as you never know whats round the corner.