What was I thinking?
Two weeks ago on this site I wrote about my hometown Winnipeg Jets as a hardy band of up-and-comers. Watch out for Winnipeg, I wrote, this time they have got it right.
When I filed my article, the Jets had won five games in succession. After I pressed the “send” button, they lost six.
After more than 40 years of cheering for the Jets, after decades of disappointment, I really ought to have seen this coming. Because when you cheer for a bad team, the cycle of fandom goes like this: Despair. Despair. Hope. Despair. Despair.
Those momentary lapses into hope are not intervals that relieve the despair. They are the trigger that unleashes the next round of despair.
Fans of bad sports teams have an ingrained sense of how it works: somewhere in Winnipeg, or Cleveland or Buffalo or Sunderland or South Africa (cricket), a supporter of a sad-sack team lifts his head from the slough of despond and finds reason to smile. He allows himself the audacity of hope. The universe notices this, becomes upset, and restores order by smiting the team in the cruellest way possible – an injury, an unlucky bounce, a bonehead play at the worst possible moment.
I accept full blame for the Jets letdown (which was relieved, finally, by a win on Sunday over Colorado). And if it helps, I predict that the Jets will henceforth start another losing streak, will miss the play-offs for a fourth successive year, and will once again leave town for some desolate American sunspot where people don’t know a hockey puck from a chocolate doughnut.
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
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