A lot was said about pride in the aftermath of the defeat of Edinburgh against Bulls on Saturday. In Mike Blair’s Post Match Reaction piece he used a variation of that word 3 times.
Huge pride. It was an excellent effort.
The pride we spoke about was during the game.
proud of the effort that the boys made today
It is difficult not to agree with the use of that word, especially in the way the day turned out. We lost Blair Kinghorn just before the start, Jaco, shortly thereafter and then Gilco ended up in the trash as a result of the number of penalties that we had given away in the opening minutes. So to fight back from 15-0 and to poke our nose in the front with 69 minutes on the clock provided a really exciting game and just like our coach I was very proud of the work and the trouble the boys had made.
That effort and work cannot be expressed and it is worth repeating that. But, the more I thought about it, disappointment was the overwhelming emotion. In short, we have been here before.
After losing 13-17 in Murrayfield to Munster in the quarterfinals of the Champions Cup in 2019, Richard Cockerill said,
“So I am proud of the implementation, but clearly disappointed about the end result”
In the 2nd last match of the regular URC season in 2022 we lost 10-16 to Ulster in a match if we had won, we might have given a home base in the quarters and said Blair,
“I am really proud of the boys in the second half, when they really expressed it with some injury problems.”
And only a few weeks later it was a similar story against wasps in the quarterfinals of the Challenge Cup, when after losing the match 30-34 the sub-cultivation in the report in the Scotsman read,
“Mike Blair said he was proud of aspects of Edinburgh’s performance”
The following month we fell on stormers in the knockout phase of the competition, 28-17, and Mike Blair said,
“First of all, I am really proud of the efforts that our boys put in”
Proud in any case mentioned above and nothing but losing to go with them. I even went this route myself and after that Ulster game I said on this blog,
“I have never been as proud of this team as I am today.”
The old saying is, praise in public and criticized privately. So there is nothing wrong with being proud of a great effort and there may not even be anything specific to criticize. However, we have to do better.
If we want to start winning trophies, or even a trophy that is not the 1872, we must find a way to be the side that comes at the top of this close run, important competitions.
A lot was made on Saturday of the fact that no European party has defeated bulls on Loftus Versfeld and for all pride in the world that situation has not changed. Another side will eventually take that record from Bulls and our efforts will be forgotten by everyone, except by anoraks like me.
The question then is, is a proud of glorious defeat a limiting factor or are it just words to calm our feelings in the aftermath of heartbreaking losses?
I don’t know the answer to that question, but exceeding that sense of pride is there a constant frustration that we cannot close these games.
I wrote all the above the day after the game, but I stopped publication because I had a niggly feeling that I was a bit hard. I even consulted Mrs. Burgh watch on that subject, but you don’t want to know what she thought. After all, there was a lot of this version. There is also the fact that, despite losing, we are 4th in the table and no team scored more attempts after 2 games.
Hard or not, I just want to see that my team wins a trophy of some meaning. Does this mean that I ata?
#Proud #disappointment