The Right Way To React To Not Being Relegated At Season’s End

These days the right way to react to most occurrences in sport is wincing and wondering who'll be investigated by the FBI or WADA next, but these macro circumstance overshadow a wonderful world of reaction that has for many been both the emotional highs and lows of their everyday life, and this week it was a chap from Norway that became the poster boy for “Relief” as his team avoids relegation from the 2nd tier of Norwegian football.

The Right Way To React
• Goooooooooooooaallll
• Milk the cows
• I'm off to the pub

Most of the sporting world is spending its time at the moment trying to work out the right way to react to the news that everyone in athletics is higher than a kite in orbit and that there are more backhanders in FIFA than you'll ever see in a Wimbledon final. This has proven most difficult for those who are yet to be implicated but are entirely likely to be in the near future (Yes, Mutko, I'm looking at you) because they have to work out just how far they can bend the truth.

However whilst the reactions of Russia's Minister of Sport to the doping charges in athletics have been something akin to that of his Soviet predecessors, he actually had the gall to intially call them “baseless”, and one by one the football federations of the world start to realize that their own football chiefs are probably as bent as a three pound note, it's good to know that football amongst all the sports can still provoke people into the right way to react to sport, rather than the pearl-clutching so often displayed before the world's press.

Now don't get me wrong, the right way to react is not necessarily always positive. There's no point being happy when you're losing, even Billy Walters picks the wrong side to back sometimes, but it is the juxtaposition between the agony of defeat and the joy of victory, and the risk inherent in not knowing which you'll experience that lies behind every fans love of the game. But one Norwegian fan was probably not gambling news of his reaction to his team's victory would spread so far quite so fast.

Gooooooooooooooooooaaaaalllllll!!!

Football is supposed to make you feel things other than disgusted, and that is often exhibited by those taking part. Any England fan of the right age will recall Paul Gacoigne crying like someone had stolen his teddy, the numerous gurning facical expressions of Gary Lineker, and that desperately angry feeling they got after the Maradona “hand-of-god” incident (which is the right way to react to a cheating bastard), but there are some reactions that go beyond even those national boundaries.

South American football commentators screaming GOOOOOOOAL when someone scores. That's the right way to react to a score line, a ridiculously over the top extending of a four letter word till it should be written with a dozen or more “O”s in it. I recall it was the celebration of choice when at school, despite none of us actually ever having watched a South American football match, we just knew about the reaction and copied that.

Of course for the most notable south American instance of the right way to react to defeat see the state of national mourning that occurred when Brazil got beaten 7-1 by Germany, and the German's reaction to victory is pretty seminal as well, although when it comes to celebrations of winning perhaps those that like to bet on sports in Norway would agreed that it is Stuart McCall who has everyone beaten as he reacts to Motherwell getting into the Champions League back in 2012.


Or perhaps not.

The Right Way To React To Relief

Naturally commentators still fashion the right way to react to certain instances. Perhaps Jack van Gelder's delightfully hysterical repeated shouting of Dennis Bergkamp when he scored against Argentina in the 1998 world cup comes to mind.


Or could it be Stan Collymore's reaction to THAT goal from Zlatan Ibrahimovic against England is pretty much indicative of the right way to react to superb skills and a side order of luck so large it blocks your view of the cabaret.


Whichever seemed the right way to react until now, whichever was the example of someone enjoying football for its own sake without being promised millions as a 'consultancy' fee to this point I'm preety sure if you're Norwegian gambling laws of nature dictate the best reaction would be from the international stage or at least a top flight domestic competition, you'd be wrong. So very wrong. Because this week it was a fan of Byrne FK who showed the right way to react to footballing success.

Byrne appeared likely to face relegation from the second tier of Norwegian domestic football (which you can bet on at ComeOn! Sportsbook) but in a dramatic last match of the season, facing off against their relegation rivals Baerum, they won a 2-1 victory that saved them from ignominy and caused one fan in particular to show the right way to react is particular to each and every one of us. With a camera in his face Bjorn Serigstad appears to be unable to process it all, and whilst his mind reels his mouth deals with the practicalities of what has occurred.


Classic.