It's good to be back, I was beginning to feel friendless and unloved.
Those austere and lonely days of winter are eminently capable of enveloping one in a shroud of forlorn contemplation that can surreptitiously sequester the imagination, encouraging animated conversation with ones reflection in the darkened window pane.
I missed the involvement associated with football and yet I must admit that the seclusion of winter can rekindle the awareness of just who it is that lives inside your skin.
The emerging light of spring therefore finds me full of eager anticipation and bonhomie. If the very promising opening three weeks for The League of Ireland is anything to go by, it appears that the players have also renewed their verve and vitality, as there have been many excellent individual performances.
It is only fair though that we allow the teams another week or two before passing authoritative judgement.
While referring to individual performances the most essential dictum that emanates consistently from the very core of professional football is that the team is the paramount consequence of everybody’s involvement.
In all team sports the individual devotion to the ethos of the collective is commensurate with the success achieved by all concerned. This has been timelessly demonstrated at all levels of every sport and yet it is all too often lost in the confusion of competition.
If this is true in sport, where the delicious irony that the team that generates the greater harmony invariable pacifies the conflict contained in even the toughest of games, then it is also pertinent to family, community and country.
Many families and communities have become splintered as iPods, televisions and their likes, allied to the frantic pace of modern living, tempt individuals into a world of isolation.
In these circumstances it is easy to forget that we belong to something great, something greater than ourselves but something that continually needs our input and participation to retain its greatness. And the greater this something, be it team, family or community becomes the more it has to give back.
The more vigorous and vibrant the team becomes based on the efforts of each individual the more the team can then return to each individual. The individuals make the team better and the team returns the compliment. Could it be any simpler? And yet all too often, it is complicated.
I witnessed a perfect demonstration of the principle last Friday in Dalymount Park. Joseph Ndo was selected as on the left wing for Bohemians.
For a player who thrives on possession of the ball Ndo was often bypassed by the early flow of the game. However, he simply played his part by working for the team and as his team got more control of the game it gave Ndo more of the ball and he produced the games most dazzling moment while creating the second goal.
Gary Deegan, who was involved much more in the game than Joseph, deservedly received the Newstalk Man of the Match Award, but everybody went home talking about Joseph Ndo.
In the past Joseph might have gradually disappeared from a game of this nature, but this time around, professional allegiance to the team prevented this occurring.
It is not a coincidence that Galway United are top of the Premier Division of The League of Ireland. Everybody is working for the team and as long as this is maintained they will cause problems for all opponents.
Indeed, down the years this team work ethic has been a commendable aspect of Irish professional football but in my opinion too often it was to the detriment of the individuality of the players.
Good managers will understand and possess the ability, and the courage, to realise the potential of both team and individual. In the past, the individual was far too often commanded to forsake his true talent and replace it with blood and sweat with the tears coming afterwards with his realisation that there should have been more to it than that.
While I accept the economic perplexity that confounds us at the moment restricts the scope of management departments everywhere, I must admit to being disappointed at the loss of some sports programmes.
The demise of RTÉ Radio's Friday Sports Night and TV3's Sports Tonight will be felt around the country. The gloom spread across the country by almost every news bulletin these days is invariably tempered somewhat by the sports news that followed.
The amazing reactions to the rugby and boxing successes of last weekend emphatically underlined the important part sport has to play in modern Ireland.
From the perspective of Ireland's professional football followers I suppose this places more emphasis on MNS. Sport has a hugely beneficial effect on the majority of people and the immense impact of Sky Sports highlights this.
The weekly MNS show offers Irish viewers a viable alternative and it is an essential outlet for the product that is important to so many people.
