You know those con­ver­sa­tions that you ei­ther over­hear or end up be­ing part of from time to time where some­one says it's on­ly sport, it's just a game of foot­ball or crick­et?

You can learn a lot about a so­ci­ety through sports such as foot­ball and crick­et, the ones that tend to gath­er the most in­ter­est from the pub­lic. A lot of times, they can be sig­nif­i­cant strik­ing so­cial events, for sport is a cel­e­bra­tion of pa­tri­o­tism.

On ma­jor tele­vi­sion broad­casts of In­ter­na­tion­al T-20 match­es whether it be the CPL (Caribbean Pre­mier League) or IPL (In­di­an Pre­mier League), World Cup Fi­nals and qual­i­fy­ing foot­ball match­es, Eu­ros and more, what we see are car­ni­val el­e­ments on dis­play: fans' faces paint­ed in na­tion­al colours, car­ni­val cloth­ing, and be­hav­iour that would be im­pos­si­ble un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances.

And this is not just a car­ni­val but a pa­tri­ot­ic car­ni­val: with na­tion­al flags, clothes of the same colours etc. Dur­ing the events, foot­ball or crick­et be­comes a na­tion­al idea, a sym­bol of na­tion­al uni­ty for all the par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries. Vic­to­ry be­comes proof of the val­ue of the na­tion, the flag and the na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. There are tra­di­tion­al mod­els of be­hav­iour, ways of re­act­ing to both vic­to­ries and de­feats.

In most coun­tries, these sym­bols, mod­els and rules of be­hav­iour evolved long ago and be­came part of cul­ture. For foot­ball, South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca are known for rich cul­tures and tra­di­tions. Eu­rope has it and re­cent­ly we saw it in Cameroon for the Africa Cup of Na­tions.

Here we've start­ed to feel an ur­gent need for a na­tion­al idea around which we can ral­ly. Pa­tri­o­tism is ob­vi­ous­ly im­por­tant for any so­ci­ety to­day, but we have not ex­act­ly been able to find any­thing that brings us to­geth­er in re­cent times haven’t we. It was a breath of fresh air to see the smiles on the faces of lo­cal fans in im­ages cap­tured at last Thurs­day’s CON­CA­CAF Women’s World Cup qual­i­fi­er be­tween this coun­try and Nicaragua at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um (Port-of-Spain). Though it was just about 700 fans at the venue, when we browsed though the im­ages cap­tured by pho­tog­ra­phers, there was a def­i­nite look of pride and joy on a lot of the faces, both play­ers and fans.

Peo­ple will slow­ly be­come in­ter­est­ed in sport again. Many may still be on­ly in­ter­est­ed in suc­cess, but this is not usu­al. As things be­gin to nor­malise again there will be that in­creas­ing de­sire of a pa­tri­ot­ic idea. The search for a na­tion­al iden­ti­ty will be part and par­cel of the re-es­tab­lish­ment of a nor­mal way of life.

When com­pe­ti­tion heats up or our teams and ath­letes be­gin move clos­er to some thing big every­one from politi­cians to artists will sure­ly want to get in on the act. Any­one tak­ing part in a ra­dio or tele­vi­sion pro­gramme felt oblig­ed to prove their pa­tri­o­tism by say­ing they had lost their voice, that their en­tire fam­i­ly was talk­ing about noth­ing else over break­fast, lunch and din­ner,,our ath­letes will hope­ful­ly be­cause house­hold names again.

Ac­cord­ing to Malyasian his­to­ri­an, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Dr Khoo Kay Kim. Khoo, sports, apart from nur­tur­ing the spir­it of com­pe­ti­tion, al­so de­vel­ops the sense of aware­ness in in­di­vid­u­als and cre­ate mean­ing­ful so­cial in­ter­ac­tion. Hence, it en­hances in­ter-racial co­op­er­a­tion and morale-build­ing in the so­ci­ety.

"Via sports, peo­ple can for­get their eth­nic ori­gin and work to­geth­er as a team," he said.

"Pa­tri­o­tism is the over­whelm­ing love for the coun­try, that push­es a per­son to the ex­treme in fight­ing for the name and glo­ry of his na­tion.

Sun­day, the se­nior women's team will take on Do­mini­ca in Guyana in their sec­ond World Cup qual­i­fi­er and the Un­der-20 Women will be off to the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­onship in San­to Domin­go where they face El Sal­vador in their open­ing match on Feb­ru­ary 25. Who knows what a good run these events can lead to for our coun­try.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com