I do not believe in luck. Now I accept that may appear a rather strange statement from a man who has spent all his life in professional football, but nonetheless the statement is a true reflection of one of the mainstay principles of my existence.
I will go a bit further now that I am in this self-expressive state of mind. Not only do I not believe in luck I also possess a sincere belief that we each create the circumstances of our existence a time before we enter this mortal world. If I am correct in this belief, then how could luck exist and, more to the point, why?
To some of you at this precise moment it probably appears that I am diverting from the mainstream topic of football, but the truth is that in my particular opinion professional football is a most genuine and accurate reflection of life and the sometimes bizarre manner of its evolvement.
A career in professional football is a life within a life. There is no other game across the world where the performers perform every week, many times twice a week and sometimes three times a week over a period of nine or ten months every year. This means that from the birth of a career in pro football the individual must grow quickly, impressing and being successful during that growth, attain early maturity and become experienced in as short as possible a time before retiring while still a relatively young man.
The trials and tribulations experienced during this compressed and extremely demanding time are reflective of life itself. The adventure of youth is combined with education and examination. The adolescent period of the career is accepting responsibility for one’s talent and fighting for a place in a man’s world against some very tough and talented men.
The zenith of the career is demonstrating again and again the true worth of an individual at the height of his physical capabilities, while the autumnal aspect of ones career is fighting off the unceasing advancement of youthful challengers while at the same time accepting the onset of ‘old age’.
Throughout all of this the most important challenges come from within and must be overcome if one is to foster the realisation of ones true potential. Proportionately, few succeed. The sad thing is that too many of the many that fail do so by apportioning blame elsewhere.
I was doing an interview for BBC radio many years ago during my playing career. It was basically about the thoughts I had previously shared with a football reporter who, on the back of another defeat had inquired what part bad luck was playing in the unproductive period my team was undergoing. At this time I am referring to my team was in trouble, we were in the dreaded relegation zone, the wailing wall of professional football in England, but I insisted that this was a direct result of poor form and absolutely nothing else.
In the radio interview I stated that the only tangible element of luck I would accede to was the parents one was born to, other than that all else was in one’s own control. ‘I am the Master of my fate, The Captain of my Soul’.
Driving home from the radio station in Kent, I accepted the contradiction contained in my reference to parents and, remaining true to my abolitionary attitude to the involvement of luck in sport and life, I concluded that luck had played no part in my being born to George and Bridget Richardson on that wonderfully portentous second day of August, whatever the year was. I had decided, whenever the time was, to whom I would be born. How can I not believe in luck and yet accept there was ‘just this one moment’?
The willingness to point the finger of blame towards luck is nothing but a bolthole for poor performers. No, I will rephrase that! Blaming luck for one’s lack of success is the bolthole of good performers, but good performers who fail to perform on the most important occasions.
There is no such thing as luck. What is sometimes misinterpreted as luck though, is the individual being ready for the opportunity.
