Sitting in a traffic queue in Drogheda late last Sunday afternoon, my attention was drawn to a young man making his lonely way along the pavement in our direction, writes David Adams
Being a non-driver, I was perched in my usual spot in the front passenger seat, so able to study this character at my leisure as he walked towards us. My wife, as ever, was at the controls.
The young man gave no signs of being drunk, or indeed of having consumed anything "mind-altering", but there was an unmistakable air of disgruntlement about him. Not threatening as such, but giving the impression of someone who, in his current frame of mind, wouldn't be too hard to get on the wrong side of. It was the bright red jacket, standing out like a beacon in the half-light of a dreary winter's evening, that had first caught my eye.
Is this a fellow sufferer, I idly wondered, or have I misread him completely and he's a gloating, full-of-himself rival? Or he could, I suppose, just be some poor soul with little in the way of dress sense. I didn't have to wonder for long.
As he got a little closer, even in the gloom, I easily recognised the rampant Liver Bird over his heart: he was wearing a Liverpool FC jacket.
He was indeed a fellow sufferer.
Liverpool, his and my team, "our team", had earlier that day been beaten one-nil at Anfield by our hated rivals Manchester United, and this poor chap was making his weary, dejected way home from wherever it was that he had watched the match. No wonder he was looking disgruntled. We had believed that this year might just be ours.
Having added a few decent players to the squad in Torres, Babel and Lucas during the summer, Liverpool supporters felt that this season we could at last mount a real challenge for the Premier League crown. Instead, yet again, the wheels have started to fall off the wagon before the Christmas period has even begun.
A season that had started with such promise is now following an all-too-familiar pattern of running into the sand early, just like so many before it. High hopes all but dashed, and the realisation of yet another false dawn, were weighing heavily not only on the shoulders of the young man in the red jacket, but also on mine, and countless thousands of other Reds around the world.
What made last Sunday almost unbearable was the fact that of all teams it was the tinselled and tiaraed prima donnas of Manchester United, the Old Trafford darlings of the sports media and the football establishment, who had ended our dreams. It could get worse than that, but not an awful lot.
I suppose there is still an outside chance of Liverpool winning the Premier League this season, but it's hard to muster much faith in that happening.
The European Champions League and the FA Cup are still to play for, but those are mere consolation prizes to the multitude of Reds supporters who hunger with a passion to see the flag of the English champions flying once again over Anfield. There is an empty feeling.
I at least have the comfort of glorious memories of when Liverpool won the league title an incredible 11 times, during the 1970s and 80s.
Alas, my red-jacketed comrade doesn't even have that to cling to, for he didn't look old enough to remember us ever having won it. As he came level with our car, he must have sensed me watching him, for he turned his head and stared straight into my eyes. His look of defiance needed no words to convey the message he was sending.
"We might be down, but we'll never be out," was his silent roar.
I felt no discomfort, much less alarm. Instead, my heart filled immediately with a mixture of pride, empathy and, most of all, a warm sense of kinship. I stared straight back at him, grimaced as though in pain, and moved my head slowly up and down, in silent communication.
Recognising me immediately as a fellow Red, he winked, raised his hand slowly in mournful greeting, and then went on his way.
It was a truly wondrous, fellowship-of-the-Kop moment.
Not for the first time, I marvelled to myself at how love for the same football club can unify people to the extent that all of the petty differences of religion, nationality, politics, ethnicity, and skin pigment are forgotten: the whole lot rendered irrelevant by the greater commonality.
I saw that my wife had also noticed my brother in defeat, so I turned to share my thoughts with her, but she spoke before I could.
"That fella looks nearly as downhearted as you," she said, "I hope you're going to buck yourself up a bit before we get where we're going." The bubble was burst; the moment had gone.
I just mumbled, "After the lights, go straight across the bridge, and turn left at the other side."
And began to reflect, instead, on just how demanding the strongest loves can be.