The Power Of Prayer

On the way to Friday Prayers just now I was listening to a BBC World Service programme related to the world of soccer. It's always a good listen as it features all sorts of interesting angles on the game and is genuinely international in flavour. The piece I caught was about the effects of their religious faith, specifically Christianity, on a couple of players from the EPL, one retired and another still in the game. Both came across as very likable guys with a real sense of groundedness about both their religion and the game. The retired player had only got going in the EPL when he was 27, after his conversion, and it was fascinating to hear how he attributed his late improvement as a player to a new-found sense of perspective resulting from his new-found faith. Anxiety issues that had plagued him since being dropped from the books of Charlton Athletic as a youngster dropped away from him.

He ended up playing for Portsmouth, in the Harry Redknapp era, where he crossed paths with the other player featured, who was in the youth team there during that time. In fact, the programme featured a lovely classic anecdote from Harry himself, relating to the senior player. It seems Harry couldn't find most of the Portsmouth team just before the big game when they were playing the mighty Man U, when the Mighty Reds really were Mighty - the Giggsy, Scholesy, Roy Keane team, three names Harry recalled from the team list he'd just seen. It turns out that his players, having seen the same list, thought it would be a good idea to attend an impromptu prayer meeting set up by the Christian guy - and Harry decided he would attend himself given his own sighting of the list. But then he gleefully chortled that Portsmouth actually won (at Old Trafford, if I'm not mistaken, though I might have got that bit wrong, and can't remember the game myself, probably because I don't want to.)

So there it is: absolute proof of the power of prayer, though painfully so from this perspective.