Roy Curtis: Sport has the capacity that allows us to believe in magic

As the national coming together triggered by Ireland’s pursuit of Rugby World Cup immortality reminds us, sport has that same capacity to transform a wasteland of solitude into kinship’s garden of Eden.

And to flood our world with sunshine.

From Italia ’90 to Katie Taylor’s ascent to the Mount Olympus summit, our sporting titans gift us a key to an enchanted kingdom, they allow us to believe in magic.

They permit us to publicly emote, to wrap the stranger on the next bar-stool in a delirious embrace without a hint of self-conscious embarrassment, to view the world through the non-cynical prism of our much younger selves.

Think of how the mood music in a county rises to a euphoric crescendo when an All-Ireland is won and the heroes bring home their booty of Sam Maguire or Liam McCarthy.

For a little while, the fog of life’s stresses clear and every skyline is azure.

The narcotic of belonging to something bigger than ourselves invades our veins, grants us a lovely woozy sensation.

It is happening again as Johnny Sexton prospects for gold deposits in the Stade de France bedrock.

A communal desire uniting the country, wrapping so many in a warming blanket of hope.

Even the many who have never held a rugby ball, who loathe the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly sense of entitlement and absence of self-awareness that are traits of the worst kind of starched-collar, vowel -strangling, Heino-slurping supporter.

These Saturday night roller-coaster rides – Scotland next up in six days’ time – have us all feeling a little giddy.

I say, “us all”, but of course there are dissidents and agnostics.

The kind of miserable creatures who, rather than savour the epic poem of victory over South Africa, prefer to let loose with performative outrage about the crowd breaking into an ecstatic chorus of The Cranberries’ Zombie.

Treating the singing of a song as some kind of war crime!

Who knows what cheerless cyst on the soul persuades a person to pull down the blinds when the world beyond the window is ablaze with the glow of high spirits?

Perhaps they might consider the sage advice of the writer Brene Brown: “Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission.”

Rugby will never be the sport closest to my heart.

All the contrived #teamofus nonsense force-fed to us by marketeers is as irritating as the game’s mangling of language (See: learnings, go-forward ball, soft hands).

Then there’s the “did he really just tweet that” comic relief of Jamie Heaslip’s lessons in tech-bro philosophy.

But then you see a wild-eyed Peter O’Mahony rising from the deck after stealing the ball from a monstrous South African and, by Christ, something stirs in the blood.

O’Mahony, the inestimable Sexton, Mayo’s Caelan Doris, Wexford’s Tadhg Furlong, these are warriors who make you care.

And caring is a mighty sensation. It yields an untrammelled rush of adrenalin, the chest-swelling sense of identity and affinity that comes with watching a world-class team uniformed in Irish green.

Over a 35-year career in scribbling, I have been blessed with a ringside seat at so many of these days of thunder.

The Stuttgart afternoon Ray Houghton headed a ball past England’s Peter Shilton, the eternal Genoa hour when Packie Bonner dived full length to save Daniel Timofte’s penalty.

Ken Doherty making The Crucible his own; Sonia O’Sullivan finding her Sydney silver lining; Ronan O’Gara sending a Cardiff drop kick on a glorious Grand Slam-winning trajectory.

Clare’s hurlers ending an 81-year wait for a hurling All-Ireland. Anthony Molloy climbing the Hogan Stand steps, the first son of Donegal to lift Sam Maguire.

All these afternoons deliver a kind of alchemy, casting a spell over their audience.

When Bundee Aki – New Zealand-born of Samoan lineage, a giant who, for the last decade, has called Galway home – hits the afterburners, tens of thousands are compelled to jump from their couch and scream him on.

This mood-lifting flight from the everyday makes us feel better about ourselves, elevating us from slumps and slouches, enriching our days with the vitamin of belonging.

Flick through the photo album of life and you’ll likely find sport – Kerry or Dublin, Man U or Liverpool, Barry McGuigan or Stephen Roche, Padraig Harrington or Shane Lowry – at the heart of many landmark days.

As Paris is presently the centre of the rugby universe, we’ll leave it to one of the City of Lights’ more famous sons to help us understand why this is so.

For the 18th century French philosopher Voltaire might have been describing Ireland’s communal sense of being when saying: “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”

Paris is a fair hike from Cork or Clondalkin or Clones, but many who step into that wall of green next Saturday will understand what dear old Bono was feeling when he sang the following words.

“For tonight at last I am coming home.”