SECOND OPINION

THE DAILY GRIND

Jonathan Stockham

As I rattled through Dollis Hill the other morning on my rail journey through Metroland into Town, I thanked my lucky stars that it was only 3 days a week. The “daily grind” of commuting would be too awful day in, day out, week in…you get the picture! Even so my trip through London and out the other side involves 4 trains, 5 stations and needs everything running like a Swiss watch fresh out of the box to make it bearable. Without all the component parts working together, the journey would be a disaster. Bit like a rugby team really!

At least it gives me time in the morning to catch up on the rugby pages in the broadsheets, especially after action packed Premiership or European weekends. (And isn’t it nice to be featuring in the press as a top flight club again?)

As Dollis Hill receded and Kilburn neared, my mind wandered from the view of terraced Victorian streets on to the daily lot of a professional rugby player. Lucky so and so’s! There they are, strutting their stuff for 80 odd minutes once a week and long summer holidays and getting paid handsomely for having fun.

Errr….not quite…..

What about their “daily grind” of training, fitness, weights, gym work, eating the right things at the right time, peeing in pots, giving blood samples to see if they’ve ingested something illegal…..like a battered saveloy from the Weedon Road Chippy.

(Oh No! Here comes Nick Johnston with a very large syringe!! Hide the chips!!)

But seriously, it can’t be a bundle of laughs all the time. The routines of training and treatment, diet and rest must get pretty boring once you’ve been on that particular treadmill for a few years. OK, I hear you say, they are professional players and they get paid for it (yes they do, in most cases in a year what some of the thoroughbred show ponies in footy get in a week!) and the very best can earn the accolades given to only the few top international players but, for most, it must be a grind, a bit tiresome and repetitive when all you really want to do is play the game and be better than the other lot for 80 minutes.

When I joined Saints as a season ticket holder in 1987, training took place on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. For a couple of hours. That was it.  It mostly started on time but this was the amateur era and players had day jobs, so were sometimes late, (usually Neil Edwards who’d be stuck on the M1 after trying to buy up another bit of West London). For the players then, rugby was a hobby which they enjoyed, were good at and which might lead to recognition as an international or a County / District player.

Nowadays, the Dan Carters or Laurence Dallaglio’s of this world can anticipate earnings into the millions during and after their careers, money beyond the wildest dreams of our best players only 20 years ago. But, like most things in life, you get out what you put in. The cost, or effort, today’s players have to put in to reach and stay at the top level is immense.

We are now seeing guys who are fitter, faster and bigger than ever before but are we seeing sportsmen? Are we seeing players who MUST win, at all costs, because they have spent all week slogging their guts out on the training paddock and all year following a regime with one aim in mind – to be a winner. Professionals, who have spent all their career on a professional rugby production line, a treadmill, a “daily grind”? Are we seeing people under almost intolerable pressure to perform? Are we in danger of seeing joyless automatons?

No, because the beauty of sport is that it is not perfect and it isn’t predictable. It is played by humans with all their fallibilities, not robots. It would be altogether too boring if it was.

When you next turn up to watch our boys in Gold Black and Green, reflect on what they have done and what they have to do, as human beings, each day, each week, each year in order to be able to maintain the highest standards required to be a pro rugby player, to be a Saintsman.

So, when something goes wrong, a pass dropped, a kick at goal missed or a line out fluffed in the game in front of 13,000 paying guests which worked like clockwork all week in training, consider this. Players don’t go out to fail, they don’t mean to play badly, they don’t want to mess up. They don’t want to lose. This is sport. It comes with success and failure. One sometimes outweighs the other, but I defy anyone to call it accurately time after time (unless you happen to be part of a Malaysian betting syndicate of course!)

The players and coaches have worked hard, every day, every week to get it right. When it goes wrong in front of us all, keep supporting them. Don’t just “sing when we’re winning.” Cheer and shout when backs are to the wall. You may have noticed, grudgingly, that Gloucester fans are good at this when the Cherry ‘n Whites are defending the line like it was the Glorious Glosters at the Imjin River all over again.

Mistakes will be sorted out by the coaches. It’s their job. We should expect high standards on the field as one of the top clubs in the country but in my opinion our “job” as SUPPORTERS is to celebrate the good bits yet encourage rather than condemn players when mistakes happen.

The Saints players have worked damned hard to be where they are and it isn’t always fun. It should be. It will make the “daily grind” worth while.

Enjoy the game.

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