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Team work could make dream work

Jul 5 2009 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

But as a distraction from the stresses and strains of domestic life, it’s difficult to beat and easily missed.

Even for the most contented fathers, husbands, wives or mothers, reflections on days spent as part of a side, squad or crew can be painfully nostalgic.

And that is among those whose sporting aspirations never rose above Sunday League football, second-team cricket and the like.

The shared experience of regaining the Ashes for the second time in four years? It’s the stuff of our dreams, yet could very well become reality for Andrew Strauss and his men.

Beat Australia again, and England can create memories that will sustain them better than money through whatever challenges retirement brings.

Lose, and they may be haunted for life. Just ask this summer’s British and Irish Lions.

Yet at least they, unlike the mercenaries who take football for granted and its fans for a ride, will feel the pain of defeat.

And there will be no sweeter sorrow for Strauss’s band of brothers. Not if their spirit remains willing while their flesh is made weak.

Yes, whatever the result of the Ashes, I envy England’s cricketers. Envy them the camaraderie I once knew. Envy them far more than I do even Andy Murray, who has walked to the brink of Wimbledon immortality all alone.

But win the little urn, and they’ll make me jealous as hell.

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