We see our sporting heroes through rose-tinted glasses

We’ve all come out of football match and met someone in the pub afterwards only to wonder if we’d actually been at the same game – the penalty that wasn’t even a foul or was a cast-iron spot-kick; the booking that was a fair tackle or should have been a red card; the midfielder who was a waste of space or the man of the match.

One team’s hero is the opposition’s pantomime villain – think, if you’re old enough, of Brian Mullins who was a legend of Hill 16 and Public Enemy Number One to the other 31 counties.

Likewise, with Thierry Henri – one of France’s greatest footballers or the man who robbed Ireland of a World Cup place by cheating with his hand.

Which would still only put him in the ha’penny place beside Diego Maradona, who – depending on your perspective – is either the devil incarnate or proud possessor of the Hand of God.

And it’s not just cheats who inspire differing views; Clare loved Davy Fitz just like Davy Fitz would have died for Clare – but, to put it diplomatically, the rest of the country didn’t share the mutual adoration.

At least until he came to town to manage them.

Conor McGregor inspires half of Ireland to stay up all night to see him perform his version of street fighting in a cage, while the other half of the nation is hiding behind the couch in embarrassment at his antics.

Even off the field or out of the octagon, we see things from polarised viewpoints.

Roy Keane v Mick McCarthy, for example – how could two people who had the one argument in the same dressing room so divide the sporting public who proclaimed to support them both?

And that’s one of the reasons we love sport – because we see what we want to see, and only from our preferred perspective.

We could sit side by side with a fan of the opposing county for 70 minutes, looking at exactly the same game from the same vantage point, and we’d still come away with two radically different versions of the same event.

Which, up to now, might just have suggested we were wearing metaphorical blinkers or rose-tinted glasses – except now the scientists have looked at it to see if it runs any deeper than that.

And it does.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and  county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.