He was all we could ever have wished for

There is something about football that makes fools of men. We walk into stadiums full of excitement or apathy, anticipation or dread and we leave them crushed, infuriated, triumphant, joyful – we never know which beforehand.

We cede control of our emotional destiny, placing it in the hands of a few people we don’t know and we can’t control and who may or may not give a damn. And then we come back for more.

But more precious and more fragile is the hope and trust of the young. When we are children, we need heroes like we need sugar, play and love. We don’t yet know how to live, we watch to learn and try somehow to copy those in whom, in our naïve wisdom, we have invested all of our trust.

Years teach us our errors and in discovering the flaws of those we admire we come to accept imperfections in those close to us and in ourselves. But just sometimes those disappointments don’t arise. On very rare occasions we find that one of those we held in such high esteem really has been all we hoped, they haven’t changed or scorned our admiration.

In a world of empty promises, we take comfort that something good remains true. It is, perhaps, the shred of reality that justifies faith. Such men are harder to find than gold dust in a stream – and far more valuable.

When one of those people passes, so too dies something in those who beheld them with awe, an idly happy part of childhood left vulnerable to the cynical practicality of life and death.

We know that our sadness is nothing to the pain of those close to them, those who really have a right to grieve, but we shed an indulgent tear just the same.

There is one less man whom we know understands when we are suffering. One less whom we know wants what we want. One less to speak for us or to turn to. It is part of a sometimes fearful realisation that we are in a constant state of change in a world we cannot control.

We readjust ourselves to the knowledge that the smiles and the laughter of so many glorious memories will forever be followed with a sadness and a solemn whisper: “too soon; too young”.

At 4am on Thursday, 15th May 2008, the Celtic story changed too, and the hearts of all who believe in it. A boy from the Calton who had become the bearer of a million dreams, the champion of a people’s ideals, closed a beautiful, glorious chapter in Celtic history called Tommy Burns.

He was all we could ever have wished for.