It’s only a game – so why does sport break our hearts? – Telegraph.co.uk

‘Was it really a life-changing penalty?’, I hear some of you ask. Aren’t I exaggerating the importance of sport just a little? Well, no, actually. The Scottish Number 8, Dave Denton, said afterwards that the result would live with him and his team-mates for the rest of their lives. And so it almost certainly will.

“We noticed that he sprinted up the tunnel,” Denton said of referee Craig Joubert. “I understand that refereeing the game in front of millions of people is tough but this has affected the rest of our lives and it’s affected a nation. If he can’t go back to the TMO for offside that needs to change because that’s affected us in a big way.”

My colleague Brian Moore said recently that he still replays in his mind the 1991 World Cup final England lost to Australia. The current (but perhaps not for much longer) England coach Stuart Lancaster admitted after defeat to the same team that the early exit from this home World Cup is something that will leave a lasting impression on him: “I don’t think I’ll ever come to terms with it, personally, because it was such a big thing.”

I can still remember lying awake as a ten year-old the night of England’s defeat to Scotland in the Grand Slam decider at Murrayfield in 1990. These experiences die hard and I, of course, wasn’t even playing.

That game, now a quarter of a century ago, was the last time Scotland won a clean sweep in what was then the Five Nations. It offers further perspective on just how massive a Scottish victory yesterday would have been.

Crestfallen: The Scotland players walk off after heartbreaking defeat  Photo: REX FEATURES

I am, by some measures, obsessed by sport; cricket and rugby in particular. But another memory from my childhood has also left footprints that I tread in today. I was 16 when I watched England come tantalisingly close to beating Germany in the Euro ’96 football championships. The game of Gareth Southgate’s penalty miss. You remember the one. To this day I don’t know how Gazza’s toe didn’t poke that extra time ball into the back of the net before the need for those fateful penalties. But I recall watching a friend shed tears afterwards and thinking to myself: ‘This is only sport. It’s not worth crying over.’ Ever since, and however invested I feel in a result, I’ve always checked myself if I’ve been tempted to well up.

Last night, though, while I wasn’t ever close to tears, I began to question the cliché that sport is only a game. Here’s the Scottish Number 8 again: “I went and met my family and girlfriend afterwards and you could have filled a bathtub with all those tears.” Tell him, it’s only a game. In fact, tell his team-mates too – the men who trained for months to have a shout at making heroes of themselves and a nation proud.