Celestial Battle On Merseyside

By AM Sunday, October 24, 2010

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The Pope’s visit to England was a month too early. Had he been there today he would surely have canonised Fernando Torres on a fast track to sainthood. In what was a double miracle it was the man who has stopped scoring who netted the winner for the team that has stopped winning. A double reversal of fortunes which divine intervention alone can explain. And even if it can’t it doesn’t have to because that’s the prerogative of the divine and the rest of us just have to accept things as they are and get on with not understanding it.

What Blackburn, a club formerly managed by Liverpool current boss Roy Hodgson, did to incur the wrath of the Lord is uncertain. No doubt a press release from the Vatican will explain all in good time, just as similar releases have persuasively explained other things.

In scoring today, Torres has increased by 100 per cent Liverpool’s win tally in the English Premier League this season. They now have two wins rather than one even though goal difference keeps them in the bottom three. Crowds are said to be gathering on the banks of the Mersey to watch the team walk on water across to the Wirral. The atmosphere is infectious. Makes me feel like running into the street and leaping for the Lord or jumping for Jesus.

The good Lord must be a Liverpool supporter otherwise he would have divinely intervened the other way and given the game to Blackburn. That’s the logic of miracles. Had he wanted to because he is all-powerful he could have allowed both Liverpool and Blackburn to win today. He chose not to for reasons our limited and finite minds cannot possibly comprehend. Anyway, had he done so, he would have been accused of plagiarising the patent of the peace process. Making people believe everybody wins is one of its tricks.

Having written all this with a dog collar in one hand and a bible in the other (typed with my teeth) the dark thought just crossed my mind that today’s result may not have been the work of the good Lord after all but rather that of the devil. Maybe the good Lord was actually in Holland intervening on behalf of PSV Eindhoven against former European greats (a bit like Liverpool in that regard) Feyenoord. His reason for going Dutch? Simple. He was continuing with his missionary work on the question of one of the seven deadly sins in today’s soccer world – greed. Why Feyenoord should be targeted we don’t really know. They are a Rotterdam based team. Why not Ajax of Amsterdam with its proximity to the city’s red light district? The intervention of Mary Magdalene perhaps, having listened to the importuning prayers of Belle de Jour. Ours is not to reason why. Suffice to know that nothing other than divine intervention could possibly have produced a 10-0 defeat at the hands of PSV. That was the type of result Bangor and Clintonville used to suffer against Linfield and Glentoran back in the 1960s when the presence of the good Lord was very palpable in the wee Province. Swings were chained up and parks closed in honour of the good Lord. Suffer little children and all that. Yes, truly, truly I say to you, the Lord must have been in the Netherlands this afternoon.

While he was busy in Holland his old adversary, the devil, slipped into England via the back entrance, usually reserved for clergy, to put a spoiler on things. His aim, simple: wreck the Lord’s missionary work against greed in soccer and give a victory to Liverpool, cause doubt and a corresponding lack of faith in the works of the good Lord. Sew division and confusion and god’s not your uncle any more, Satan is. Sort of complicates things. Besides Lucifer for Liverpool kind of takes the shine away from today’s victory. And Rangers beat Celtic to boot. What use is the peace process if every game can’t be a draw?

Catholics – we haven’t a chance.