There is only so much any sports fan can take, and this weekend was too much, writes TVNZ Sports Presenter Scotty Stevenson.
Too much for the voice, the heart, and the soul. Too much for the quest toward emotional stability. This was a weekend that disrupted the chakras, upended the serenity, and punched us all right in the adrenal glands and the prefrontal cortex. I would have struggled to write this column had I been in one piece. I am now a shattered mess.
Why does sport do this to us? It shouldn’t have the right. People get married with less enthusiasm. There is something essential about the contest, about that fine line between joy and despair, that tightrope of life that we each walk every day. There it is for 80 minutes, or 90 minutes, or for 120 minutes, a contest between the two poles of the existential spectrum: the zero-sum game, the winner takes all.
There was nothing this weekend that compared to the Phoenix-Victory semifinal. Football is just made for occasions like that. To see the ‘Tin packed to the rafters on a record-setting night set the scene for the high drama that followed. Football is a game of ebbs and flows, of tidal surges and retreats. Football is maddening and enthralling, a battle of wills and feet and foreheads.
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I was quite prepared to give up on the Phoenix. With two minutes left in stoppage time, I was done. I was cooked, charred and blackened by 97 minutes of a red-hot contest. The Phoenix, staunch defenders, had failed to conjure much at the other end of the pitch. Alex Rufer’s penalty had been saved by Paul Izzo because that’s just what he does. Adama Traore had scored a goal because that’s just what he never does. It was no good. They were done. The dream was over. I was slumped on a sofa covered in the crumbly remains of emotional over-snacking.
“Just believe”, urged my viewing companion. I had forgotten they were there. They were channelling Ted Lasso. Now was not the time for that. Ah, but it was. Thirty seconds later Oskar Zawada calmly slotted an equaliser from a Barbarouses header from a patently improbable through-ball from the depths of absolutely nowhere.
Cue insanity. Two children emerged from separate bedrooms to check on my health. Actually, one thought I was yelling at him. I was not. I was yelling at a television about an event beyond my control, in a city at the other end of the island, for a team I don’t often watch. There were levels of excitement, then there was this, a committal-worthy outburst that roused two boys from their computers and ensured the cats didn’t return to the house for several hours.
The next 30 minutes were straight agony, of course, they were. I was invested. My soul had left my body and was floating above the field of dreams and nightmares. Chris Ikonomidis somehow got past the heretofore impenetrable Finn Surman and found the back of the net. My soul returned to my body, chilled and frosted over. A part of me had died. I saw Alex Rufer in extreme closeup, a mix of dejection and determination – a terrible combination of emotional states representing everyone’s daily struggles. It was grim and painful and in that very moment, I would have sold one of the aforementioned children if in return it would put a smile on his face.
It was not to be. Not only was I stuck with two children, but the full-time whistle blew and the Victory won the game and 33,000 fans left the stadium feeling hollowed out and shucked. I was not in their number but in that moment we all were one, occupying a limbo state and wondering what the alternate reality may have felt like.
I don’t think I can do that again. I didn’t think I could do that again. I did it again on Sunday.
Not even 24 hours had passed and here I was in front of that same television, that harbinger of doom and dread. On the screen, the Warriors, running out onto Suncorp Stadium to face the Panthers in a match they could not possibly win. A car crash was imminent and we were all lining the roadside to watch it unfold.
From the kick-off, it was a calamity in motion. Taine Tuaupiki, starting at fullback in a side shorn of Shaun kicked the ball dead and the Panthers, restarting on halfway, scored the opening try with just two minutes gone. I was a husk at this stage. Any nutritional content left inside me had been scooped out and devoured. There was nothing left to give, no point in carrying on.
And yet…
They stayed in it. They threw the ball around like kids in a pickup game. They played unorthodox rugby league and looked like they were enjoying it. They made desperate goal-line tackles and made horrible mistakes. They fell behind and fought back. Taine Tuaupiki played the game of his life. He did not want to be defined by one error, just as none of us do. There was a redemption story happening before our very eyes, one that just might have a happy ending if we could all muster the faith and, like the Warriors, stay in it.
There were eight minutes left when Tuaupiki slid to the right and took the pass from the impressive Te Maire Martin. He evaded the defence of Peachey. He slid over for the try. It was 20-all and the Warriors could take the lead with the conversion. Tuaupiki lined it up. My heart escaped my mouth and fell down my chin. Messages were sent to 47 deities in fifteen languages. He kicked it and slid it off the right hand upright and over. He kicked the final points of the match. Taine Tuaupiki was the best of us, he was all of us, and he was all we wanted to be.
The Warriors found a way to win, unlike the Phoenix the night before. Two games, two outcomes, and one thing in common: Sport has a way of making us forget about ourselves sometimes, making us lose ourselves in the process. That really is why we love it. For the briefest of moments, in this challenging and unforgiving world, we get to hitch a ride on the emotions of others and read the stories they write for themselves, and us.
After this weekend, maybe I could take just a little bit more of that.
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