Sometimes, despite all efforts, it comes to this
Saturday 8th October 2016: Aviva Premiership Round 6: Harlequins v Northampton Saints at the Stoop. Result: Quins 20 (4 league points) Northampton Saints 9 (0 league points). Latest league position: Harlequins 8th, Northampton Saints 9th.
The above brief details will just about provide the reader with all he or she needs to know about yesterday’s Harlequins home victory – a lacklustre match between two teams who formerly occupied Premiership top four places almost as a matter of right but which this term have been languishing in the bottom half of the table for good reason.
I wouldn’t even recommend, as I often do, that if readers wish to appraise themselves of the ins and outs of what actually happened, rather than read this column they should seek out the relevant report in the sports pages of their favourite newspaper.
As Wilfred Pickles (1904-1978), professional Yorkshireman and actor/radio presenter, would have said: “There’s nowt worth knowing ….”
By tradition – because of family and friendship connections, never mind the considerable century-long rivalry between the two clubs – I have an arrangement whereby I am hosted ‘oop Midlands’ whenever Quins play at Franklin’s Gardens and then in turn host a party of three at the Stoop whenever the Saints come to town in south-west London.
Yesterday at 1.30pm I was nursing a pint of real ale in the bear garden of the Sussex Arms off Twickenham Green, a favourite hostelry of both sets of fans in advance of any game at the Stoop, in weather swaying between dull and cloudy and bright weak sunshine, irritated only by the near-pain level decibel sound of passing jumbo jet airliners en route to or from Heathrow overhead at eight to ten minute intervals.
Forty minutes earlier (ten before our scheduled meet at said pub) I had been called by my Saints contingent to report that they were stationary and gridlocked on the M25 apparently due to a vehicle that had self-combusted some half a mile ahead of where they had reached.
When they eventually hove into view, still in their car but opposite the Sussex, we had a quick confab and made an executive decision to abandon our previously intended pub grub & pints luncheon and instead simply strike out for a place to park as near as possible to the Stoop and then buy our grub on the hoof at from one of the stands at the ground.
This we did – and very enjoyable too was the ‘steak & ale pies plus chips with gravy’ that we ate, propped up against a wall, at the back of the South Stand.
Given the starts to the 2016/2017 Aviva Premiership season that both clubs had endured, it was inevitable that the pre-match prospects and banter would consist of a contest as to which set of fans could be most downbeat about their own team’s prospects.
It was the same wherever – and with whichever rugby fans – I had been in conversation all day: Quins fans (their boys then 11th out of 12 in the table with only relegation favourites Bristol below) upon the verge of burning their season tickets and demanding the heads of their entire coaching group on a plate … and ashen-faced Saints supporters, dismayed particularly by their under-performing pack, barely able to punch its way out of a wet paper bag this term, confidently predicting another abject surrender ‘on the road’.
Any sports fan will know how things can often pan out – quite the reverse of what you expect.
If your team is confident, in form, tearing up trees and building unstoppable momentum, on the day it will then inexplicably fold meekly and play like a drain. But if you’re as nervous as a kitten about even turning up, especially given the reputation and recent form of the opposition, your boys (as likely as not) will produce a Rorke’s Drift backs-to-the-wall effort out of the blue and sneak a victory against the odds.
It’s what makes sport such a compelling activity even for those who aren’t actually taking part upon the field of play.
In the event yesterday’s game was an example of a third option. A contest between two teams in a rut of mediocrity – lacking confidence, trying too hard, prone to simple handling errors and lapses in discipline, lacking grunt up front and dynamism in the back-line – which, despite all their huffing and puffing and desperation, could between them scarcely produce ten minutes of thrilling action in their eighty-minutes-plus-overtime stint at the coal face in front of a sold-out but a frustrated and underwhelmed Stoop paying audience.
A case of a long drive home for my guests – a much-shorter bus ride for me – and a collective sense among us of having spent another expensive but ultimately wasted day of our fast-diminishing life spans that we will never be able to get back.
