Sporting expectations - should we demand the spirit of Amundsen rather than Scott?

Some thoughts on the fickle (and sometimes bone-headed) nature of sporting expectation, with apologies to Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen. This is taken from my weekly column in The Bath Chronicle


The sands of expectation are a constantly shifting feature on the sporting landscape. What supporters expect can dramatically erode from one season – or indeed one month – to the next.

There are some constants. For reasons attributable only to collective hysteria, for example, every four years the English public expects to see its national side lift football's World Cup. This is a hopeless, cyclical act of illusion triumphing over reality.

But in most circumstances, where a vestige of brain power remains, supporters (except for the determinedly fanatical) are smart enough to let a side's recent form temper their expectations.

What, then, are we to make of the fact that Bath Rugby's performance against Leinster at The Rec on Saturday has been heralded by many (and I include myself in this) as something of a success, even though it was a loss?

To some supporters, it's a nonsense to view any home loss as anything other than inadequate. We've come to a pretty pass, they say, when a club of Bath's traditions and reputation is satisfied with picking up a losing bonus point at The Rec.

Talk of going down fighting against the champions of Europe is all good and well, they might add, but we want the spirit of Amundsen down here on the banks of the Avon, not Scott.

This viewpoint is understandable and I have some sympathy with it, especially when all the talk from the Bath camp at the start of the season was of turning The Rec into the sporting equivalent of Fort Knox.

But while the home of blue, black and white has proved to be very far from impregnable this season, at the weekend there was a sense of the tussle having been worthy of the shirt.

First-team coach Brad Davis remarked during pre-season that if visiting sides were to leave The Rec with anything during the 2011-12 campaign, then they would leave broken. And there can be no doubt that when Leinster climbed aboard for the flight back over the Irish Sea on Sunday evening, they will have known all about just how physical a game they had been involved in.

There has been a kind of nobility in Bath's refusal to point to their injury list as an excuse in times of recent woe. But casting one's eye over the team sheet on Sunday, the mismatch in squads wrought by Bath's injury crisis was patent.

Leinster may have been without the world-beating Brian O'Driscoll, but their bench still bristled with Irish internationals, while Bath's was heavily populated by academy players.

With that in mind, and with Bath's poor Premiership performances providing the rest of the context, Sunday's match was very far from being just another 'L' in the ledger for Bath.

A natural question following on from this is, what sort of expectations should Bath fans have for Saturday's return match at the Aviva in Dublin? The answer has to be "Higher ones than if you'd asked the same question a week ago".

And that, surely, is a sign that the rot has been stopped and (modest) progress made.