Dark days
Saturday 24th February 2018: Aviva Premiership Round 16: Harlequins v Newcastle Falcons at the Stoop: Result – Harlequins 10 Newcastle Falcons 28: League positions – Newcastle Falcons 4th on 46 points, Harlequins 9th on 32 points.
I should estimate that approximately 40% of incoming feedback upon my reports to this website over the years has been negative in the sense it tends to suggest that I have such a hang-dog (‘glass half full’) outlook on life that either I am most probably clinically depressed and ought to see a shrink; or, if I’ve already done that, must have temporarily mislaid my anti-depressant tablets; and/or I’m a typical example of the supporter-type that no sport ever needs because I clearly take such huge delight in criticising my team, its coaching staff and indeed just about everything to do with the way the club and its business is run.
Before I contest – or even plead guilty to – any or all of the above, let’s just lay out a few facts of life.
I’ve been a supporter of Quins for as long as I can remember – albeit (I’ll get the knocking quip out of the way early on) some might say that’s only a relative term given my advanced age and increasingly dodgy short-term memory – but I’d make the case that when it comes to blind ‘come hell or high water’ tribal loyalties, the only thing that really matters to fans of elite sporting teams is how things are going out on the field of play.
[And here I’d emphasise that I’m not casting any aspersions upon those much-to-be-admired fortunates who gain deep life-satisfaction from supporting their local homespun club that somehow ekes out a living in some lower, sometimes amateur, league of little global consequence, even if they get beaten 75% of the time].
No – when it comes to elite sport, you can talk all you want about whether your team’s playing squad and coaching staff are up to the job at hand; whether or not your team’s academy is producing enough home grown players and/or international players; whether its style of play is to your liking and/or in keeping with the club’s traditions; whether the atmosphere on match days at your home ground is good or bad; and about whether the club is well run, has a positive business model and vision regarding the direction it wishes to go (or not) … but, at the end of the day, inevitably, all that matters is whether it wins or loses where it counts.
And – to repeat myself – that’s out on the pitch.
As my knowledge of sport is largely confined to the Premierships of football and rugby union in what follows I shall direct my lines of argument to them.
So far as I’m aware I’ve never read a Jane Austen novel, certainly from cover to cover, but she alighted upon a fundamental principle of life when, in scratching out her opening lines to Pride and Prejudice she came up with the statement ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’.
I’m pretty confident that the Premier League football clubs with the hardest time of it are those like West Ham, Manchester United and Spurs who at one time or another have hit the heights but also retain a much-loved reputation for playing in a cavalier, attractive, entertaining fashion. Simply because – for their fans – it isn’t enough just to be successful and win trophies, this has to be done with a certain elan in keeping with a communal nostalgic rose-tinted and perhaps inaccurate perception of how their team used to play in its golden era(s) of yesteryear.
However, one of the ironies of life is that you cannot have everything.
Take Manchester United – I may be quite wrong on this, but in my book Jose Mourinho has very rarely, if ever, produced teams that play attacking, entertaining football – well, except occasionally by accident. Yet he’s very successful.
Steve Coppell
I’d hazard a guess that, for most Man U fans, whilst they’d forgive him plenty if they achieved a double or even a treble in the next two years – as night follows day – they’d still start harping on about his failure to emulate the halcyon days moist-eyed grandparents still fondly recall of the Tommy Docherty side – even though relegated – of the 70s when Gordon Hill and Stevie Coppell flew down the wings pinpoint crossing on the head of Stuart Pearson with Gerry Daly and Sammy McIlroy weaving their magic in midfield .
It’s the same with Quins fans. We’re demanding little blighters. We don’t just want to win everything, we want to do it in ‘our way’ which means with an all-out attacking style that on any given match-day gets fans of both team off their seats and roaring in delight, wonder and appreciation at their creativity and verve.
Mind you, it matters diddly-squat what we say, at the end of the day the result (i.e. winning) is more important than any froth that caps it off.
If you peeled away the outer skins of any metaphorical Quins-fan onion, you’d discover someone who’d rather grind out endless efficient boring but relentless victories in the style of Saracens or Exeter Chiefs than deliver brief fitful periods of glorious helter-skelter, Harlem Globetrotter-esque entertainment but then lose every week.
As we do now or so it seems.
All this season – from both club executives and coaches – Quins fans have heard nothing but stirring-sounding platitudes about global ambitions, aiming at a top four finish, things will get better when all our injured players are back, coming good in the second half of the season, and so on [ad infinitum et nauseam].
Such guff and promises are just examples of two-a-penny hot air – anyone can say this sort of thing and even sound convincing whilst they’re at it (sometimes).
But when this happens every week and then straight afterwards out on the pitch the boys deliver yet another frustratingly half-baked pile of bird do-do, it begins to cast a pall in the stands.
I call in evidence Quins match results sequence since 1st January:
L-W-L-W-L-L-L-L
Within that sequence they’ve lost their last four Premiership outings on the bounce and notched just ‘won one, lost one’ in both the Anglo-Welsh and European Cups.
