“In the end it’s the hope that kills you ….the beautiful, horrible hope!”
Hope eh? On Saturday we turned up full of it. We battled to the last man, we gave everything and yet in the end just came up short to lose our first Challenge Cup semi-final in 19 years. In such circumstances the fans can ask for no more than 100% effort and wanting, but then, when all that has been put in by both sides, as I said last week, the outcome in such games will always be in the lap of the gods!
Man it was a tough defeat to take though!! But on this occasion as a Hull fan in the end the best team won, and it’s hard to argue otherwise really.
To score three tries from our mistakes, with our two coming from well-engineered pieces of play says a lot, but of course, the ‘experts’ would retort that we shouldn’t have made those blunders in the first place. We didn’t make many individual errors but the ones we did make led invariably to tries. Warrington made a few too, but the gods smiled on them and they got out of jail. When all came to all, two great kicks from Austin did for us, yet we still had our chances. But, as the rained poured down and the ball was difficult to handle, those simple twists of fate that sometimes you can’t control, saw the scales of destiny tip toward the Cheshire Club and at the final hooter they deserved their win and it was the FC that came out second best!
But, only just and in what was a titanic battle we never gave up and we never gave in.
We fought for each other and played as a team and when that final try went in, our players were, to a man, visibly distressed with some virtually inconsolable. At the end the players were just distraught and once their statutory TV commitments were met, no one from the 17 could speak to the local media afterwards. They were hurting as much as we were, so you won’t be seeing much complaint from this fan in here this week, for that effort and passion was all I could ever ask for!
I just hope that somehow from somewhere, we can find a deal of spirit again by next Thursday, but if the lads can’t, I won’t be too surprised, for it will be a while after Thursday, before I get over my afternoon in the rain at Bolton.
It’s always hard to lose in such circumstances, someone always has to, but none of us find it that easy to handle when its us!
Continue reading