When Manchester City qualified for the Champions League final last May, I was asked to write a piece about what it meant to the club’s fans to reach the final of Europe’s premier cup competition after years of near-misses and knockouts.
While I can’t speak for other fans – so much of supporting any club is a unique mixture of the deeply personal and the intensely tribal – I wrote a piece that tried to make sense of the extraordinary journey the club has undertaken since the 2008 takeover transformed its fortunes.
The column ran in the build-up to the Champions League final last May, which ended in defeat for City in Portugal at the hands of Chelsea.
If the match ended in disappointment, I now remember that May weekend for different reasons. Not long after the piece went live an email popped into my inbox from someone called Tim March.
Nothing unusual in that – readers contact The National all the time to offer perspective, feedback and suggestions on our reporting and commentary – except that the sender’s surname was the same as mine and, intriguingly, his given name matched that of my brother, who lives in Singapore.
This was odd, as I had been swapping messages with my brother Tim all day on WhatsApp and had spoken to him minutes before on Zoom as the final approached.
Why had he suddenly switched platforms and sent me an email?
When I opened the email, it turned out this was another Tim March, who I now know is a long-term Sharjah resident and, like me, a City fan.
We, the alternate Tim and I, began a correspondence on that day founded in the first instance on our shared surname, but the more we dug into our own stories, the more we found out that there were connections rooted in experience.
Tim had been brought up watching the same City idols as me – Peter Barnes, Steve MacKenzie, Gary Owen, Trevor Francis and a host of other names familiar to fans of old – glide across the lush turf of Maine Road, the club’s famous old stadium.
And like my own family, Tim’s had been transplanted to Manchester.
The March side of his family moved up to Manchester from London in the early 20th Century. My parents, who met and married in Manchester, found their way to the city by different routes. My mother had moved there as a child from the north-east of England. My father was born in London, but moved to Manchester at the start of his career.
Our families ultimately settled in different parts of the city, Tim’s in north Manchester, mine to the west of the city, although we moved close to London a few years later when my father got a promotion at work.
The football parallels ran deeper than a mutual admiration for Manchester City.
Our conversations over the past few months have involved a lot of discussion about the footballers in our respective families.
Tim’s dad, Stan, was a youth player at Blackburn Rovers, before making his debut for Port Vale and going on to play for Macclesfield.
He was an outstanding youth prospect before injury curtailed his career. Tim tells me that Stan missed out on the chance to play at Wembley with England schools, but did end up touring Germany with a representative side. The two caps Stan earned on that trip remain a cherished family heirloom. He still takes a decent free kick today, by all accounts.
Stan made his league debut against Queens Park Rangers, who my grandfather, Richard “Dicky” March, played for many years before. Dicky went on to represent the club more than 300 times over a distinguished career with the London club.
When he was granted a testimonial by QPR in the 1930s, the match programme praised his judgement, resourcefulness and willingness to work for the team – life attributes that I like to think have been passed down the family tree.
For more than 20 years, Tim March has called the UAE home, working in sports education since 2001. My own branch of the March family arrived in the country in 2008, which mirrors the journey to Manchester that our respective relatives made years ago.
We’d need to dig into family histories to see if there is any genuine ancestral connection, but friendships have been forged before by coincidence and circumstance such as these.
I spoke to Tim this week, prompted perhaps by City being back in Portugal for the Champions League for the first time since that final defeat last May or by Chelsea recently being in Abu Dhabi for the Club World Cup.
Tim was back in Manchester when I caught up with him. A breath of sadness tinged our call, as he had returned to the city because his mother had recently passed away.
Very graciously, he was happy to talk, even at such a difficult moment.
“I am sure somewhere there is a connection,” Tim told me, while also saying that he felt my contacting him at this time was another instance of the strange serendipity and chance that courses through our story.
We plan to meet up when he returns to the UAE. Our parallel lives may well soon divert their course.
TOUR RESULTS AND FIXTURES
June 3: NZ Provincial Barbarians 7 Lions 13
June 7: Blues 22 Lions 16
June 10: Crusaders 3 Lions 12
June 13: Highlanders 23 Lions 22
June 17: Maori All Blacks 10 Lions 32
June 20: Chiefs 6 Lions 34
June 24: New Zealand 30 Lions 15 (First Test)
June 27: Hurricanes 31 Lions 31
July 1: New Zealand 21 Lions 24 (Second Test)
July 8: New Zealand v Lions (Third Test) - kick-off 11.30am (UAE)
Landfill in numbers
• Landfill gas is composed of 50 per cent methane
• Methane is 28 times more harmful than Co2 in terms of global warming
• 11 million total tonnes of waste are being generated annually in Abu Dhabi
• 18,000 tonnes per year of hazardous and medical waste is produced in Abu Dhabi emirate per year
• 20,000 litres of cooking oil produced in Abu Dhabi’s cafeterias and restaurants every day is thrown away
• 50 per cent of Abu Dhabi’s waste is from construction and demolition
The biog
Hobbies: Writing and running
Favourite sport: beach volleyball
Favourite holiday destinations: Turkey and Puerto Rico
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Meydan Racecourse racecard:
6.30pm: The Madjani Stakes Listed (PA) | Dh175,000 | 1,900m
7.05pm: Maiden for 2-year-old fillies (TB) | Dh165,000 | 1,400m
7.40pm: The Dubai Creek Mile Listed (TB) | Dh265,000 | 1,600m
8.15pm: Maiden for 2-year-old colts (TB) | Dh165,000 | 1,600m
8.50pm: The Entisar Listed (TB) | Dh265,000 | 2,000m
9.25pm: Handicap (TB) | Dh190,000 | 1,200m
10pm: Handicap (TB) | Dh190,000 | 1,600m.
UAE rugby in numbers
5 - Year sponsorship deal between Hesco and Jebel Ali Dragons
700 - Dubai Hurricanes had more than 700 playing members last season between their mini and youth, men's and women's teams
Dh600,000 - Dubai Exiles' budget for pitch and court hire next season, for their rugby, netball and cricket teams
Dh1.8m - Dubai Hurricanes' overall budget for next season
Dh2.8m - Dubai Exiles’ overall budget for next season
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Water waste
In the UAE’s arid climate, small shrubs, bushes and flower beds usually require about six litres of water per square metre, daily. That increases to 12 litres per square metre a day for small trees, and 300 litres for palm trees.
Horticulturists suggest the best time for watering is before 8am or after 6pm, when water won't be dried up by the sun.
A global report published by the Water Resources Institute in August, ranked the UAE 10th out of 164 nations where water supplies are most stretched.
The Emirates is the world’s third largest per capita water consumer after the US and Canada.
Pad Man
Dir: R Balki
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Radhika Apte
Three-and-a-half stars
The Two Popes
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce
Four out of five stars
The bio:
Favourite film:
Declan: It was The Commitments but now it’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
Heidi: The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Favourite holiday destination:
Declan: Las Vegas but I also love getting home to Ireland and seeing everyone back home.
Heidi: Australia but my dream destination would be to go to Cuba.
Favourite pastime:
Declan: I love brunching and socializing. Just basically having the craic.
Heidi: Paddleboarding and swimming.
Personal motto:
Declan: Take chances.
Heidi: Live, love, laugh and have no regrets.
'Project Power'
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dominique Fishback
Director: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Rating: 3.5/5
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The specs
Engine: Two permanent-magnet synchronous AC motors
Transmission: two-speed
Power: 671hp
Torque: 849Nm
Range: 456km
Price: from Dh437,900
On sale: now
Uefa Nations League: How it Works
The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.
The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.
Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.
The biog
Title: General Practitioner with a speciality in cardiology
Previous jobs: Worked in well-known hospitals Jaslok and Breach Candy in Mumbai, India
Education: Medical degree from the Government Medical College in Nagpur
How it all began: opened his first clinic in Ajman in 1993
Family: a 90-year-old mother, wife and two daughters
Remembers a time when medicines from India were purchased per kilo
HEADLINE HERE
- I would recommend writing out the text in the body
- And then copy into this box
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- That's about it
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A Bad Moms Christmas
Dir: John Lucas and Scott Moore
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell, Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines
Two stars
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
