So your team finished second in the big match. It’s no big deal, right? After all, it’s just a game. But as much you tell yourself that, you’re going to have to deal with the fact that it is a big deal, and it’s much, more than game. Here’s how to get through the nightmare of defeat.
No-one is immune to the pain and grief of loss, and there will come a time during every SuperBru season where you will be faced with the most profound and agonising experience: your team has lost.
Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Be prepared – it’s going to be a shaky ride. The most important thing you need to know as you gird your loins for the storm of disappointment is that those five stages are not a roadmap and you are not going to progress from one to the other in any linear sense at all.
You’ll bounce from anger to denial and back to anger, before wallowing in depression and bargaining. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to acceptance just in time for the next match.
Take the journey with me, as we ride through the hell of a defeat.
It feels like the end of the world, right? I mean your team is your TEAM! They are a hand-picked legion of the very best players, and here they have let you down.
Well, it obviously can’t be their fault. It must be the coach. He is old. His views are old. His practices are old. His methods and defence strategies are tired and he hasn’t got a clue how to harness the best out of your heroes, who are fit and smart and agile and totally the best team in the world, ever. This is denial. And it’s okay.
Your fervent faith in your team makes you more than a little blind to things like the fact maybe – just maybe – on the day, the other team is better. Crazy. Impossible. Won’t accept that. I hear you.
Or it’s the ref. Who is blind and deaf and would be better suited to keeping score at Sunny Pines bowls club. He is also completely biased against your team. His decisions (if such they can be called) are inconsistent, infantile and utterly incorrect. How did this guy get appointed as ref? Who did he bribe? It makes you mad! Seething, red-mist-descending mad!
You share your rage on Facebook and tweet the team, demanding to know why their bribes weren’t bigger than their opponents’. Anger. It’s ugly. Get used to it because you will visit it often, with deep, deep passion. Move all fragile objects out of the room before you watch the match and banish the children to a nice, calm place way, way out of earshot.
If only your team was playing at home. The pitch is better maintained and the home crowds are so much more supportive, cheering your guys on to a victory every single time they play. No man. These away matches disrupt their performance. Long flights and dodgy local food only serve to throw the team off, and let’s not even talk about their psycho bad sport spectators that rile and scream and jeer and hurl abuse. If only we played a home game, we would win, right?
If only we could have a rematch then we promise hand-on-heart that our team won’t commit the ridiculous high tackles and the unmistakable forward passes that every team should be allowed to do just a little bit. Absolutely. We promise. Please? This is bargaining and it’s desperate. Not pretty. Don’t do it.
As the magnitude of the loss sinks in, you just feel that…well, you feel nothing, really. Who cares if the sun rises? Or that life carries on. Just down another breakfast beer and pull the duvet over your head. Welcome to depression.
Eventually, the fug of hangover clears, and the sounds of real life start slowly – ever-so-slowly – to filter through. You start noticing your wife’s smile again, and you can even remember your children’s names. You venture outdoors and it’s not completely unpleasant. The urge to throttle your overly-jovial neighbour sublimates into a quiet shudder garnished with a tight smile. Breathe in. And….release. This is the cool new world of acceptance. Where your team lost and you’re okay with it. Just don’t talk about it.
Besides. There’s another match tomorrow. And there’s biltong to be bought and a braai to prepare. You put on your big girl panties and you step forward into the world, a changed fan, ready for the next high, not really thinking about past defeats and the horror your life became as a result. It’s obvious that the best box at rugby is Pandora’s box, and the hope that this time – this match – things will be different.
You’re going to be okay.
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