Where there's Hope there's Life

It's a sci-fi clique. The stricken starship is sucked toward the black hole. Will they survive?

Battered but undaunted, Commander Viddie barks orders at a crew on the verge of mutiny. First mate Doddsy rediscovers his courage just at the right moment and the newly captured alien, Flores, signals a new course. Reverse thrusters are engaged and the ship starts to regain control. The crew start to hope and.....

Same time next week, folks. Will Viddie survive? Will Flores prove to be yet another unreliable guide? Will the starship Adelaide avoid total annihilation and live to fight another day?

Every great story of survival is based on characters who fight their way from the most unpromising situation and finally arrive, vindicated, on the other side. Not always gloriously, but somehow satisfyingly. Think of every Roald Dahl children's story.

This has been the darkest season for Adelaide. Not much has gone right. What could have gone wrong has gone wrong. But there remains a glimmer of light.

The clique goes, "Where there's life there's hope". I beg to differ. I think that where there's hope there's life. The mighty Reds rediscovered hope and belief on Saturday night. They played as if they believed in themselves and in each other. They looked like the team we know they can be. They looked alive.

Many people with a modicum of life experience will know what it means to see a friend or family member sink into depression. They change. They are the same person but, somehow, they are different. They have lost purpose, lost belief, lost hope. Lost themselves.

The great Austrian psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl, who survived the concentration camps of the WW2, knew a lot about the loss of hope.

"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate. We all feared this moment - not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him anymore."

I don't want to trivialise the suffering of those inmates but I think there's a good reason to suggest that this year Adelaide have lost self belief and hope. The fans have watched in horror. Viddie has tried to steer a sinking ship without the wisdom and knowledge to turn it around. Not that he hasn't tried.

This year's ACL campaign, bought with the success of last year, has offered a way forward to the Reds - a way to regain a sense of self and a glimmer of hope.

Marco Flores is part of that. A creative midfielder not afraid of a challenge and with the skill to twist turn and lift his eyes to see a pass - then make it - could be a key to unlocking opposition defences.

A fast paced, ball-playing, attacking formation, pressing up the park will also reignite players passion for the game. It's so important to remember that football is fun - and it is most fun when you're playing to win.

Self-belief. Hope. A vision of what might be. These things are as essential to a team as they are to a person.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of 'The Little Prince', said: "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

In other words, remind them of the big picture. The skills will be there but the vision is what leads them on.

Each week will tell a different story but I think Adelaide may well have benefitted from the ending of their A-league dream and the beginning of a new campaign. It's a new page and a chance to be a new team. In football, small changes can make huge differences.

So, roll on Newcastle and the ACL. The black hole has been avoided - for now. The stars are shining brightly.

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While I was skimming the net for 'hope quotes' I came across these gems that I felt were apt for various parts of the Reds family.

For the fans: "We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

For Viddie: "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning." Albert Einstein

And for those cynics amongst you, one from the most depressive of philosophers: "Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man." Friedrich Nietzsche

Poor Nietzsche. He was, apparently, a football fan. I guess his team lost a fair bit.