Pub talk
After the Mickey Mouse mismatch-farces of the Timisoara Saracens European Challenge Cup matches over the past fortnight, we Harlequins fans are now preparing for the festive season and what in 2016 will be the supposed extravaganza of Big Game 9 at Twickenham Stadium next Tuesday, the day after Boxing Day.
In the recent past I have become friendly with one or two new fellow Quins fans, one of which I met up with for one of our regular drinks this week after work – that’s in his case, not mine, because I’m retired and recently (for what it’s worth) began receiving my state pension.
There’s a phenomenon whereby in life, if you keep meeting people with the same interest or interests as yourself who also seem to have views are consistent, or in parallel, with your own upon all related subjects then there’s a natural tendency to start believing that your views are correct, even if they are not.
Let me expand. When you care about something – let’s take a sporting club of which you have been proud to declare yourself a supporter, because in this instance, of course, that’s what I’m talking about – off your own bat you begin to form opinions of how the club is progressing on and off the field.
I’ve never been so arrogant as to believe that my views upon anything/everything are correct, far from it, and so therefore generally tend to keep them to myself – at least unless and until I’m in a gathering in which the subject comes up and then if pressed I’m happy to drop my pearls of wisdom into the conversation. Even as I’m doing so, I have no expectation that anyone is going to agree with me but – inevitably – as humans do, when you find that others seems to have similar views to your own, you tend to take comfort in them and add more fuel to the fire.
Conversely, if you’re asked your opinion and then find that one or more people present have an opposite or differing view, then you immediately go on (if not the defensive) the ‘fall back’ position of assessing whether there is going to be room for constructive discussion and, if not, then close down the subject, or at least your own contributions to it.
No point in getting aggro or generating heat over something as trivial as sport, as someone once might have said.
Nevertheless I can report today that in my very enjoyable pub drink this week whose duration was a little over an hour, my fellow Quins supporter and I (he of many greater years’ service to the cause than me) seemed to be as one on virtually every subject of the moment.
We both hate attending Twickenham Stadium for any rugby match because of the awful match day experience and so neither of us will be at Big Game 9 (Harlequins v Gloucester) on 27th December. My companion also made a very good tangential point. When the ‘Big Game’ was first hatched under the stewardship of Mark Evans all those years ago, it was an innovative, unique and visionary concept. It did quite well early on. But these days, with Saracens playing some of their games at Wembley, Wasps trying its luck with the ‘St George’s Day’ game at Twickenham, and now others (Bath this year?) doing the same, it’s all become rather commonplace.
And what have Quins done in order to build upon its early Big Game concept success, to stay one step ahead of the completion, to keep their version of a festive season ‘event’ unique?
Nada.
Yep, nothing. Every year it gets promoted in the same old, boring, manner. They always hire some X-Factor reject or similar nonentity that nobody has ever heard of to perform a mini-concert, but that’s about it. If Quins has any marketing zip about them, over the past eight years they’d have been working their nuts off to come up with newer, brasher, or different ways of taking the whole thing to a new level.
It’s the same with ‘growth and development’. Senior Quins executives spew ‘marketing-speak’ by the yard about their ambition to make Harlequins the premium club rugby brand in the world but the key to mass club support in the world of professional sport is winning games and trophies. They natter on proudly about ‘the Quins way’ of playing (open attacking) rugby, which is fine in theory but – if you ask any committed club fan – they’d far rather have numbingly boring rugby if that what it takes to secure wins and trophies.
How can anyone have to gall to claim that their goal is to be the biggest (most successful) club side in the world when clearly, on the pitch, there is no evidence at all of any such ambition?
And what’s the point of having a supposedly thriving academy system – currently proudly supplying five or so players to the long-form England squads of Eddie Jones – when these days, during both the autumn and Six Nations international ‘windows’ when those boys are away, Quins can barely beg, borrow or steal a Premiership victory from anywhere and consequently end season after season struggling even to maintain a mid-table position?
The swiftest way to global domination in club sport is to be the most successful elite club around – simply because new potential entry-fans (just like the veteran ones) want to follow a winner, not an also-ran.
Quins don’t seem to understand this.
Make that another pint of Heineken please, barman! ….