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In 4 hours time, the Lionesses, the England women’s football team, will be on an open top bus heading for Buckingham Palace. They will be accompanied by military musicians from the Royal Marines and the Royal Airforce, as if a conquering army is returning home from battle. And the police expect the crowds to be large – and noisy - welcoming the first England football team to retain an international title and to do it on foreign soil.

These are women who are physically strong, victorious, patriotic. The exceptional teenager Michelle Agyemang -kneeling during the penalty shootout and giving glory to God at the end has been a striking feature. As have the dance moves of the scorer of the winning goal Chloe Kelly. The players have spoken of pride in the team, their unwavering commitment to leave it all on the pitch, never giving up and as several players said in their post match interviews, being proud to ‘be England’.

This parade might feel like a distraction in the face of such terrible and unrelenting news. But the playing of sport and games - at any level- has a function in society that goes much deeper than the drunken rendering of Neil Diamond songs when we win.
In 1945, just as the catastrophic Second World War was ending, George Orwell wrote that sport was ‘war without the shooting’.
Before the war in Gaza, the towns of Rafah and Khan Younis, now synonymous with the unconscionable suffering of their people, both had football teams in the Gaza Strip Premier League. Two years ago, the last time the league was played, Rafah came 2nd and Khan Younis was 3rd.

And in Gloucestershire, it was reported last week that free tickets to football matches are now part of a pilot social prescribing scheme, recommended for patients with mild depression or anxiety. Physical connection to relieve mental isolation.

The exercise of physical muscles stretches our mental and spiritual muscles too. St Paul knew what he was saying when he used the analogy of running a race to describe the life of faith. Perseverance, energy and commitment are needed in the spiritual life as much as they are physical disciplines.

At a time when the world’s conflicts seem to be being directed from a golf course, at a time when bellicose rhetoric fills the air and many governments are normalising war as a way of resolving problems, international sport, in its ability to channel human aggression - and loyalty- is much more than a game.
As I’m cheering the Lionesses later today, I will be thankful that sport gives us a creative way to exercise all our muscles: physical, mental and spiritual. To be fierce rivals, to fight together and to win. Without the shooting.

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