A Supporters View

By RT
February 18 2006

RT's own take on the week-end of the sale game

High on Hwyl

How did you react to the result against Sale last Saturday? Is your glass half empty or half full? Put another way, do you find satisfaction in Schadenfreude or do you get high on hwyl?

If you are the half-empty kind of Eeyore, you will have seen your team beaten by Sale’s second XV by shipping 48 points at home; making a succession of errors in defence and at the re-start; coming away with nothing.

If, on the other hand, your glass is half-full, you will have seen the Warriors make their highest GP score this season (including 3 cracking tries from the Backs) against the leading team in the country who conceded more points to us than to any other English team this season. You will have watched a “never-say-die” performance against a “second” team which included World Cup stars, British Lions, International players and a host of talented individuals who would be first choice selections in most other Premiership squads. You would have seen some unlucky refereeing decisions and some defensive mistakes, but also much that was creative and exciting against an opposing team which was a joy to watch. You would have been part of an enthusiastic crowd of supporters who shared a drink and a chat after the game, with congratulations offered on both sides.

In short, the “glass half-full” supporter would agree with the report which began:

Worcester Warriors and Sale Sharks served up a Guinness Premiership
encounter at Sixways on Saturday to match anything seen throughout
Europe this weekend as they scored an incredible 50 points and 5 tries
in the first half alone.

On Sunday, we were in Cardiff to watch Wales play Scotland: another entertaining, running game, played in a stadium that was awash with hwyl. This is an untranslatable word which is sometimes defined as “eloquence arising from high emotion.” In rugby terms, it is usually used to describe the passionate support given to the Welsh team by a partisan crowd. Equally importantly, however, in understanding the concept, is the connotation of warmth which it contains. Hwyl is an all-embracing emotion which does not exclude the opposition. (Provided, of course, that they play fair, lose to Wales and are, preferably, anyone but England!)

There was certainly plenty of hwyl about under the closed roof of the Millennium Stadium on Sunday. Bread of Heaven, Delilah and Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau rolled around the arena in a wave of patriotic support, but the same emotion could also be felt in the thousands of Welsh voices which joined together in the singing of We’ll Keep a Welcome and in the handshakes of the Welsh and Scottish fans who, at the end of the match, wished each other “Good Luck”, “Safe journey home” and “See you next year at Murrayfield”. It could not have been further from the kind of negative big game atmosphere which has been attacked in recent outbursts by Charlie Hodgson and Bernard Laporte.

What, you may say, does this have to do with Worcester and Sale? For me, it helps to explain why, despite the disappointment of our loss on Saturday, I did not experience the misery I had felt after the games we lost over Christmas. The Sale contest was, unlike those other games, a match which was a pleasure to watch. It was also one which, for the supporters at least, represented the triumph of hwyl over Schadenfreude.

At the beginning of February, Red Saint of Northampton published an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek dissertation on the pleasures of Schadenfreude i.e. joy at other people’s misfortune. It is, of course, a feeling that we have all experienced at some time or another. How many of us felt a frisson of guilt about singing “I’d rather be a Warrior than a Quin” when we heard that Jeremy Staunton’s kick had missed the posts at the end of last season, or gave a small cheer last Saturday when teams below us lost games which ensured that we maintained our league position?

As with any other dangerous substance, it is important that Schadenfreude is used sparingly. It is both corrosive and addictive. Its acid needs to be regularly neutralised by liberal doses of hwyl, such as that experienced in Cardiff on Sunday, but also at Sixways on Saturday when, despite the handsome Sale result, there was no evidence of gloating.

A match against Sale, after all, reminds us of our membership of the rugby family. Not only do John Brain and Philippe St.André have a long history from their Gloucester days, but Kingsley Jones, Stuart Turner and Sililo Martens are Worcester Old Boys, the South Pacific players are bound together by a network of links across the world and the French contingent of both teams bring us into the European rugby fold. As for the supporters, it was good to see that those of both sides embraced the concept of hwyl. We expect it from our own fans, but the Sale travelling support were the most enthusiastically vocal that we have heard at Sixways for a long time and those that I met were equally warm in their praise of Worcester and of the quality of both teams.

So, as I reflect on the lost opportunities on the field last Saturday, I am still filled with pleasure at the memory of the skill and commitment shown by both sets of players and the enthusiastic sportsmanship of both sets of supporters. For 80 minutes, I even forgot the anxieties of league positions and relegation fears in the excitement of the game.

As this season moves inexorably to another stomach-churning conclusion, I am reminded of the need for those of us who support the Warriors to maintain the reputation of Fortress Sixways as a formidable venue for visiting teams. However, if this is done with a strong measure of hwyl, we can ensure that Worcester never becomes a club where the misfortunes of others are greeted with glee, but which is known across the land as somewhere that, whatever the scoreboard shows, “Keeps a Welcome” for its visitors whoever they might be.

RT