Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:20 pm  

I'm actually not that gutted. I would have been gutted at this a few years ago but now I feel like we've been in four major finals, won three, lost one. Federer, Djokovic lose Grand Slam finals every now and then you just have to take it with dignity.

We have done well this year and you can't complain about Leeds winning today, they were the better team.

Last year was much more gutting than this but overall nothing has ever come close to the disappointment (for me) of losing the playoff to Hull in 2005 with Johns in our team, that was the worst ever day for me as a Wire fan.

Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:29 pm  

The disappointing thing for me is that Leeds didn't need to play that well to win - much like our finals against them

Warrington definitely didn't reach their peak but maybe that's because Leeds didn't let them

Briers sadly didn't show up like I wanted him to. Even though I'm a Saints fan I would have loved to have seen him put on a great show in the biggest game of the year

Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:49 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Last year was much more gutting than this but overall nothing has ever come close to the disappointment (for me) of losing the playoff to Hull in 2005 with Johns in our team, that was the worst ever day for me as a Wire fan.

I disagree. That was the first in a quartet of lows for me, the others being Huddersfield 2010, Leeds last year and now tonight. As each time we have got that little bit closer before being kicked in the teeth it has got that little bit harder to take too.

If I'm honest, although I did expect to win that Hull game, and believed Andrew Johns gave us a slight chance later on too, I didn't REALLY expect us to beat Saints, Leeds or Bradford and consoled myself with that. Similarly with Huddersfield 2010, yes I expected to win that game, and I had a dream of ending the hoodoo in the final game at Knowsley Road the following week, I knew that in all probability yet another defeat to Saints would have been on the cards as it was for Huddersfield.

Last year and this year were different from those two. I genuinely believed we could be champions and we aren't. And that hurts more than anything that has gone before it.

I endured years of Warrington mediocrity, but in truth defeats didn't hurt as much back then because they were expected. The concept of actually winning trophies was laughable, so failing to win them made very little emotional impact. I just turned up, watched the match, enjoyed a couple of pints and went home. Wins were obviously more enjoyable, but defeats were shrugged off and quickly forgotten about.

Now they hurt. Big time.

Yes, we could win it next year, or the year after. We could even find ourselves in a decade from now in a Leeds type position of winning six finals from seven appearances in nine seasons. On the flip side though, we might not win it at all, and the desperation to simply do it once is getting harder and harder to take with each passing failure to do so.

Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:56 pm  

Dropkick Murphy wrote:

I'm absolutely shattered by that result tonight and I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. I walked out heartbroken on 78 minutes (yeah I know, not a true fan), jumped on a train to Oxford Road and straight to Manchester uni to see Gallows, and even an hour of very loud punk rock only managed to offered brief respite.

I'm devastated and feel no shame in admitting it.

Gallows punk rock Yeah right.

Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:58 pm  

Paul Wood tweeted he's sitting in hospital as I speak having treatment for a ruptured testicle, oh the glamour!
Briish Rugby League, best game in the world played by the best sportsmen in the world, and I'm glad I'm lucky enough to have been born into it

Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 11:01 pm  

Thelonius wrote:

Not so much gutted about the result, rather I'm disappointed. Leeds are a champion team when it comes to playoff/grand final rugby, they have been there and done it so many times.

However, I am gutted about the whole Grand Final experience. Get in there early, to take in any atmosphere/entertainment, and find that whilst I had a pretty amazing seat with an incredible view behind the sticks there was stuff all to keep me 'entertained' except from some bird dangling from a big balloon for 5 minutes just before the teams came out.
Then the drunken cretins arrived. The drunken cretins who thought it was fabulous fun to burst balloons right next to the ears of the people in front of them. The drunken cretins who only had one volume, VERY LOUD, and couldn't string a sentence together without filling it with copious quantities of F and C words. The drunken cretins who managed to get their ale to their seat and managed to pour a fair bit of it over me (pretty certain it was deliberate). The drunken cretins who weren't Leeds or Wire fans (though I'm pretty certain that they did have Yorkshire accents). Fortunately the drunken cretins disappeared just before half time, and never came back (I suspect they were some of the ones ejected).
Then, at the end, disappointed as I was I felt it was right to stay and applaud my own team and then wait until Leeds received the trophy and applaud that too. But after the Leeds fans in front of me could only stick the Vs up at the Wire players whilst screaming at them to Eff off you losers I thought why bother and left.
I would say that the seats around me, in front and behind, would have been premium seats to sell to fans of the finalists, but the RFL obviously feel differently, I won't be buying tickets direct from the RFL in future!

I like Wire fans especially after the 2011 cc final .I thought their fans were most gracious,and I have even made friends with some of them,but after Wembley there was some unsavousy behaviour from some Wire people ,banging on coach windows etc.Thats how it goes nowadays

Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 11:03 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

In Australia they used to say you have to lose one to win one.

This.

Getting to the grand final itself was the major hurdle to overcome. We lost because of a lack of experience on that stage (whereas Leeds have it in bucketloads). We are still learning as a team and this was just another step on the ladder. Within the next five years we'll reach at least one more final, if not many more.

Re: Gutted : Sat Oct 06, 2012 11:13 pm  

How does this thing of having to lose a final to learn how to win one work?

We didn't have to lose a Challenge Cup final to learn how to win one, we got to three and won them all. Leeds have lost six so how many do they need to learn to win one?

If we had beaten Leeds last year in the playoff but lost to Saints in the Grand Final, could that have been the difference that got us the extra 2 tries today?

Re: Gutted : Sun Oct 07, 2012 12:02 am  

sally cinnamon wrote:

How does this thing of having to lose a final to learn how to win one work?

We didn't have to lose a Challenge Cup final to learn how to win one, we got to three and won them all. Leeds have lost six so how many do they need to learn to win one?

If we had beaten Leeds last year in the playoff but lost to Saints in the Grand Final, could that have been the difference that got us the extra 2 tries today?

In 2004 a young leeds team played their first grand final against an experienced bulls team. They won!

So this thing of having to lose one to win one isn't true, it's just there for consolation because losing the 'first one' is a b*tch. Losing it isn't so bad when you've had recent wins. But the first one, it's a kick in the nuts.

Re: Gutted : Sun Oct 07, 2012 12:28 am  

I'm okay about it really. We didn't deserve to win.

The game was very poor for me. Neither team played well, we just knocked it on a lot and offered Leeds good field position.

If either team had turned up at their best they would have trounced the other side. Leeds were poor-ish, Wire were shyite.