As every angst-ridden adolescent up and down this land knows only too well, you cannot choose your family. Equally, as we wend our merry way through life it becomes increasingly clear that we do not carefully or rationally select our particular sporting allegiances. That is why there will always be Everton supporters among us. You do not choose your teams. They instead pick on you, inhabit your very being like some devastating flesh-eating virus. Escape is impossible.

In an ideal world we would all have been born in Down so that we would never have to know what it is like to lose in an All-Ireland final. We would all be related to DJ Carey so that we could almost casually claim connections with greatness. And Irish League football would only be a figment of someone's over-actively cruel imagination as we instead flocked in our thousands to watch an endless supply of imports from South America play sunshine football at Windsor Park.

This life, though, is never like that. Instead we scrape by on a meagre diet of near things and what-might-have-beens interspersed with periodic disappointments. There are occasions when those let-downs can be minor, little more than the irritation of a missed penalty or defensive mix-up. At the other end of the spectrum they can be as catastrophic as a cup final defeat or humiliation at the hands of your fiercest rivals.

There are times when the sheer arbitrary unfairness of all of this becomes painfully apparent. Last Sunday evening presented one such occasion in the form of debilitating defeats for both Tyrone and Celtic. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde rather grotesquely, for one of your chosen teams to lose is unfortunate, for the other to repeat the trick just a few hours later is much more than any human being should be expected to take.

To Tyrone first. Despite the return of the Eugene McKenna-Art McRory "dream team" this has been a meagre winter spent scrapping for points in the gloom of the National Football League. Each outing has taken on the depressingly familiar shape of a bright start, a dismal middle section and a late rally to get something from the game which is destined to end in failure. Last Sunday's encounter with Galway was no different and hardly bodes well for a long summer of Sunday afternoons with the Clones sun beating down on our backs.

As the promise of the Peter Canavan-inspired mid-1990s fades into folk memory it is perhaps time to come to terms with the fact that we are destined to accompany Fermanagh as one of the great lost tribes of Gaelic football. Ours will be a fruitless search accompanied only by the laughter of those who have cruelly stymied us time and again when the promised land was in sight.

That is why, throughout the length and breadth of Derry, needlessly triumphant video showings of the 1992 National League final have replaced all the usual forms of nightlife on Friday and Saturday nights. These events are thronged by hordes in the red and white county jerseys who mercilessly re-enact those final few seconds of the game when Plunkett Donaghy and Finbarr McConnell let Anthony Tohill's 45-metre kick slip through their hands. This never ceases to entertain the masses and the guffaws can be heard all the way to the Tyrone border.

Across the county line, a few miles away, the natives huddle in little support groups reminiscing about long-gone days and wondering what the chances are of patching Frank McGuigan together for one last Ulster championship. With precious few new young players even hinting at breaking through, this is the pitiful state to which they have been reduced. Things are really that bad.

But, to use one of the more favoured phrases in these parts, no group has a monopoly on suffering. Which is where Celtic come in. To be saddled with the twin crosses of Tyrone and Celtic is fairly conclusive proof that there is no divine force shaping our destiny and that we have to take our chances alongside all the other sporting unfortunates of this world.

Rangers drew on Saturday, so this was set up to be Celtic's big week. A win last Sunday, so the woefully misguided and naive scenario went, would be followed by a Celtic victory in tonight's televised Old Firm game and, as if by magic, a phoenix would rise from the ashes of what has been a desperate season. Instead they showed the same lack of courage that has blighted the club for a decade when a real opportunity to inflict a psychological blow on Rangers has presented itself. Kindergarten defending and spineless finishing contributed to another away defeat.

The fact that, with Rangers so utterly dominant at the moment, the Scottish League is all but over for another season may actually work in favour of tonight's game as a spectacle. While everything else around it seems to be moving forward towards super leagues and other new structures, the Old Firm game remains frozen in time like some sort of historical curiosity.

The fact that it stands at the epicentre of the lives of the fans on either side does not protect the fixture from the vagaries of time. Tonight is perhaps a chance to show the outside world that it is more than an anachronistic tribal set-to.

The Celtic supporters, either at Celtic Park or watching at home in their living rooms, will approach this coming evening with care-worn, hang-dog expressions. In recent years they have been inured against the cycle of failure.

In situations like this you achieve a strange sort of inner calm, a definite feeling of inner peace. Winning, you convince yourself, is such an alien concept that it doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things. Far better to expect the worst - something like a 5-0 stuffing after Rangers have had four men sent off - and work on the principle that anything else - even, heaven forbid, a draw - would be an excellent night's work.

Labouring through life with Tyrone and Celtic as your constant companions does strange things to you. So much of your sporting existence is directed towards preparing for and cushioning the blow of the next disappointment. But still you keep coming back for more. And you know that you will spend tonight half-hiding behind the sofa expecting the worst but hoping, against all reason, for something better.