Anky van Grunsven, Dutch dressage rider and triple gold medallist at the Olympic Games, needs to wear one of her old hats to win a competition. She has tried competing when wearing a brand new hat but the results were dismal.

 

According to scientific research three quarters of all people taking part in sport at top level are superstitious, and especially among footballers this affliction reigns supreme. For example, during his time at Manchester United David Beckham wouldn’t dare to play without wearing the same underpants.

 

Football and superstition go hand-in-hand. In South Africa, medicine men accompanying the African teams were very busy in the stands. Supporters of the South African team even resorted to slaughtering a cow not far from the stadium in order to increase their luck. Not that it helped much, but even so.

 

A Manchester United fan claims that Wayne Rooney’s face has appeared on his swollen knee. We hear almost daily of appearances by Jesus or the Virgin Mary in fruit yogurts or on pancakes, but for Wayne Rooney to appear seems rather farfetched.

 

You may have missed this fact but England drew against Algeria because a pigeon had settled itself on the Algerian goal. Obviously its aim must have been to guard the goal of the Algerian side.

 

Recently, I walked behind a girl of about twelve with bunches and a small rucksack. She must have been on her way home after school. Whenever she came across one of those ribbed pavement stones meant to be a walking aid for blind people she briefly stopped to touch it with her right foot.

 

She also regularly crossed the street in a straight line to touch the next lamppost. Every now and then she cast a furtive glance around to make sure no one was taking any notice of her.

 

Children are almost invariably superstitious. Well anyway, I certainly was as a youngster. On my way to school I avoided borders between pavements stones. When going to the toilet, I also felt compelled to first count the wall tiles, before leaving the smallest room. I certainly couldn’t fall asleep before I had checked the space under my bed.

 

The older I get the less superstitious I become. The only activity I engage in today is the lighting of candles but that is an accepted official ritual.

On the internet you can light virtual candles on various websites such as Isidorusweb, a ‘portal for web surfing, Dutch speaking Catholics’.

 

I couldn’t resist surfing to it immediately. The submitted intentions will be added to the prayers of the mission sisters in Arnold Janssen convent according to the website. Ah, what a marvellous name: Arnold Janssen convent.

 

Occasionally, some of the prayer intentions are very touching. For example, someone has just written ‘help’ or ‘I can’t go on’. But others are interesting for totally different reasons. Listen to this one: ‘Please God, teach my son to drive properly and safely’. Or: ‘For a successful operation on our priest, his mother’. Heaven may have quite a task on its hands to figure out which priest and which mother are to benefit from this prayer.

 

It can get more confusing still, when I read: ‘We pray that A. may enter your Kingdom swiftly’. I do hope that A. is no longer in the land of the living.

But an absolute treasure was this one: ‘We are very keen to light a candle so that we will sell our home this week. We expect viewers and we hope that they will be enthusiastic. P.S. We have already buried a Saint Gerard in our garden’.

 

The advantage of believing in God is this thought: unbelievers will get the surprise of their life when they die. In case the unbelievers are right after all, they can’t enjoy their triumph after they have died anyway. I call this a win-win situation for believers.

 

I predict that a Catholic team will win the World Cup. Even Wesley Sneijder, the midfielder of the Dutch national team, has recently converted to the Roman Catholic faith encouraged by his girlfriend and the priest of AC Milan. In any case I want to spend as little time as possible thinking about Beckham’s underpants. I’d rather light a candle.

© Arnold Jansen op de Haar
© Translation Holland Park Press
 
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