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Here I sit at my little Dell Inspiron. It’s been a rough week. Averaging four hours sleep a night, and with the usual work and family commitments, coupled with some unusually severe tiredness, I haven’t exactly been firing on all three cylinders for the past seven days.
I can’t quite put my finger on the actual reason, but all I know is that my head space hasn’t been quite right this week. I guess we all have those weeks, so I am putting the drama Queen in me to rest here, once and for all.
The real story is that no matter how bad I might feel, not matter how tired, embattled, despondent or defeated I may be at any time, there is one thing I should never, EVER do … and that is lose heart in the Wests Tigers.
I have written previously about the highs and lows of supporting this club, and although I have just endured our fourth close finish in as many matches, I have rarely been prouder to call myself a Tiger than I am tonight.
This was almost a fairytale win, but in losing, I think it may just be a defining moment in our season.
Better still, I think it might just exorcise some demons of the past three and a bit seasons, where this same team has folded like a house of cards in far less trying times.
But I never expected to see it tonight. There, I said it. And I’m not proud.
Maybe it was my headspace. Maybe it was the fact that we had three of our strike players ruled out of the match in Galloway, Collis and Lawrence. Maybe it was the fact that reading on the Tigers’ website a hour before kickoff that the heart, soul and spirit of the Tigers, captain Robbie ‘The Flying Falafel’ Farah, was to also miss the match with concussion.
Yeah, that’s what it was. I’m blaming Robbie’s omission for my faith plumetting to never before seen lows.
Well, that and the fact that we were to play against a backline that will some day go down as one of the most ridiculously talented seven players ever assembled in Club football. But mostly it was Robbie.
Regardless, I lost faith. For a little while.
Falling behind 8-0 after 13 minutes sent my already depleted confidence to emo-esque levels. And then just as I was reaching for the razor blades, the Tigers decided that things weren’t going to go down quite like that.
They stood up and said that they weren’t going to use the injuries as an excuse for a shellacking, they weren’t using Robbie’s absence as a way to excuse a poor performance, and they sure as hell weren’t going to let that traitor Ben Te’o get through 80 minutes without a few bruises.
So I watched, in an anxious state at first, but then with a little more confidence, some passion, a little heart, some pride and a little bit of chest thumping (and a suspected busted collar bone (ok, I’m being melodramatic again, but it hurts to type!), not to mention a sense of this team finally coming of age, as 17 players, dressed in hideous white jerseys played their guts out in horrendous conditions against far superior opposition (talent-wise), and against all odds.
And by golly-by crikey, they very nearly pulled off the win of the century.
I have seen them fold when their season was on the line for the past three seasons. I have seen them throw away a finals berth in the last seconds against Newcastle in 2007, absolutely pack it in when key players went down, to the point that Benji Marshall getting a cold had the bookies turning the knobs out in a frenzy.
But what I see now is a side with the ticker I always said they had.
This from a fan who has watched his side lose their third straight game. The same fan that barely three hours ago had resigned to the fact that he was to watch his Tigers go like lambs to the Brisbane slaughter.
The very same fan whose heart is still beating out of his chest an hour after the final siren. Like I said, I am wracked with guilt right now.
But in six weeks time, I think I might just look back on this column and think: just how drunk was I?
And after that, I will think, I always knew those Tigers could do it.
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