The slings and arrows of fortune are part and parcel of sport; you win some, you lose some. But that doesn't make a defeat any easier to take. Especially at home.
As fans, we’ve all picked over the performance and the result from the opening home game of the season last weekend, when Tigers were beaten by Wasps at Welford Road.
We will all have our ‘expert’ opinion on where the game was won and lost. Those opinions will cover a huge range of theories, estimates and guesses, but we do all have a couple of things in common – we have the benefit of hindsight, being able to judge a game while already knowing its outcome, while also being aware of the fact that there is nothing any of us can do about it now.
Defeat is a downer on any rugby weekend, especially when you follow a club who win rather more than they lose. Unfortunately, though, you do have to accept that it happens from time to time. The goal is to make the gaps between those times as lengthy as possible.
The Tig felt down on Saturday evening and no better after checking the Sunday papers – it’s always worth a look just in case we’ve managed to force a recount. But then, in the space of a couple of minutes on Sunday morning, there were a couple of signals that life, even in defeat, goes on.
First, a family emerged from a local shop, with the young son in a Tigers replica shirt. He did not look like a young man with the worries of the world, but he wore the shirt with a clear pride in its colours. Moments later, getting out of a parked car, I spied another supporter in Tigers colours. It seemed that all was well with the world again.
Everyone wants to be part of a winning team and it is easy to wear your colours after a significant win, but to see those two shirts on the morning after the night before provided just the fillip The Tig required.
It was a defeat, it was a tough one to take. It was against a significant rival and on home soil too so it hurt, but in a 10-month season you’d like to think we can inflict a bit of hurt on some others along the way too. Just ask the guys in The Shed at Gloucester for starters.
So it is honours even so far, now this is the time to start being those time gaps.
As fans, we’ve all picked over the performance and the result from the opening home game of the season last weekend, when Tigers were beaten by Wasps at Welford Road.
We will all have our ‘expert’ opinion on where the game was won and lost. Those opinions will cover a huge range of theories, estimates and guesses, but we do all have a couple of things in common – we have the benefit of hindsight, being able to judge a game while already knowing its outcome, while also being aware of the fact that there is nothing any of us can do about it now.
Defeat is a downer on any rugby weekend, especially when you follow a club who win rather more than they lose. Unfortunately, though, you do have to accept that it happens from time to time. The goal is to make the gaps between those times as lengthy as possible.
The Tig felt down on Saturday evening and no better after checking the Sunday papers – it’s always worth a look just in case we’ve managed to force a recount. But then, in the space of a couple of minutes on Sunday morning, there were a couple of signals that life, even in defeat, goes on.
First, a family emerged from a local shop, with the young son in a Tigers replica shirt. He did not look like a young man with the worries of the world, but he wore the shirt with a clear pride in its colours. Moments later, getting out of a parked car, I spied another supporter in Tigers colours. It seemed that all was well with the world again.
Everyone wants to be part of a winning team and it is easy to wear your colours after a significant win, but to see those two shirts on the morning after the night before provided just the fillip The Tig required.
It was a defeat, it was a tough one to take. It was against a significant rival and on home soil too so it hurt, but in a 10-month season you’d like to think we can inflict a bit of hurt on some others along the way too. Just ask the guys in The Shed at Gloucester for starters.
So it is honours even so far, now this is the time to start being those time gaps.
