MATCH PREVIEW: WASPS v TOULOUSE

 Sometimes it's hard to Kipling your way out of a defeat like the one Wasps suffered at the hands of Glasgow last Sunday. The disaster of defeat seems so much greater than the now unexperienced triumph of the prospective victory. How are you supposed to treat them just the same?

The simple fact is that in eighty minutes of rugby Wasps undid all the good that they had taken from the bonus point loss in Toulouse, bonus point wins against Glasgow and Dragons, and the hard fought victory away in Wales. Three hundred and twenty minutes undone by eighty. Those rounds now count for nothing and although a mathematical chance still exists for us to go through as a lucky loser, by Sunday lunchtime that chance should have evaporated. We will be playing for pride rather than the expected winner-takes-all showdown (and possibly a place in the Amlin, but that's scant consolation right now).

Expected? Well, let's qualify that. Very few Wasps fans simply 'expect' to win when the team plays, I suggest. The expectations are bent more towards the performance, and what might accrue should the performance live up to expectations. A week before the Glasgow game the Wasps pack had done a job on Harlequins, winning seventy percent possession and losing only because of Quins' magnificent defence and the less than challenging play of Wasps' back-line. Put in the same forward effort against Glasgow, tighten up the handling and back play just a fraction, and what with the Scottish side missing both first choice centres and one first choice wing, a win was surely on the cards. Not guaranteed, not certain, but certainly there for the taking.

As it turned out, of course, the performance was several notches down from the one against Harlequins, and Glasgow's makeshift back-line outperformed Wasps' pretty much first choice one for the bulk of the game, never mind the set-piece. The consequent disappointment felt by Wasps fans, and expressed on this very message-board, is twofold. Disappointment at the defeat, certainly, and what it means for our chances of qualifying. But more than that, it is disappointment at the manner of the defeat, in that a great chance had been wasted not because Glasgow blitzed us off the Firhill turf (what remained of it) but because in a crucial, possibly season-defining game, Wasps had come up with an utterly abject performance. They didn't live up to our expectations, and I'm pretty sure they didn't live up to theirs, either. If we fans went to bed heartily teed off with the whole thing on Sunday evening, perhaps having vented our spleens on the message-board beforehand, then it's no surprise – Kipling can stuff his equanimity where the sun don't shine!

In any case, when it comes to supporting a sports team, Kipling is wrong. The whole point, the whole emotional investment, is predicated on the fact that defeat and victory are two wholly different experiences. If you can treat them just the same, then the chances are that you won't find supporting a particular team very rewarding. It is the difference between the highs and the lows that gives texture to the supporter's sporting life: the bliss of a Heineken Cup victory is that much more blissful because of near (or far) misses in the past – just ask any Munster fan. That is why we never want to get into a situation where the same couple of teams are guaranteed to win a particular competition – it's no good for the fans of the other teams, certainly, but it's no good for the fans of the winning team(s) either. Does a Manchester United supporter get as excited about a Premier League championship as, say, a Blackburn fan did in the dim and distant past? The more difficult a challenge, the sweeter the feeling when it is finally conquered – triumph should be a scarcity, preferably preceded by a good few disasters, just to make it that much more special.

Perhaps that's how we'll see the Glasgow defeat one day, as one of the low points that will make future success more exquisite. Granted, at the moment it doesn't feel like that. As Wasps fans we'd much rather be experiencing the high points right now. We've got enough disappointments stored up in the bank already, thanks very much.

It would be easy to see this Sunday's match as a damp squib, a what-might-have-been. It is certainly the latter to some extent, and an edge will be lacking because of it, but as Wasps supporters we are also (hopefully) rugby supporters, and a visit from the four-time Heineken Cup champions and undisputed kings of European rugby is still a rare event that ought to be savoured, whatever the context. Forget the failure to qualify. Forget the Glasgow disaster. On Sunday we have eighty minutes against a club containing the likes of Jauzion, Clerc, Poitrenaud (ho ho), Michalak, Servat, Dusautoir, Poux, Heymans...the list goes on. If you can't get excited about that, if you can't become just a little bit dispassionate and savour the chance to watch this team in action, whatever the result, and whatever the consequences, then I fear for your soul. This would still be a match to look forward to, even if we had lost all five of our previous pool games.

And, as one of the characters in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land is fond of saying: I have known this before. In 1996, Wasps had lost their first two games in their Heineken Cup pool, effectively ruling them out of quarter-final contention. One week later the inaugural and reigning Heineken Cup champions, Toulouse, exchanged their southern French surroundings for the rarefied and exotic climes of White City. Having seen Wasps hammered by Munster the previous weekend, les Toulousains might have imagined that they were going to step out onto the Loftus Road pitch to find the pool points gift-wrapped, tied with a bow and waiting for them on the halfway line. Those of us sitting in the stands were probably of much the same mind, disconsolate at the Thomond Park thrashing and hoping only that this defeat wouldn't be quite so embarrassing. Eighty minutes later, something of a miracle seemed to have occurred. The game had produced ninety-four points, nine tries and one of the biggest defeats in the Heineken Cup's short history. And seventy-seven of those points, and eight of those tries, belonged to Wasps!

Seven seasons later the two teams met again in that famous final at Twickenham, decided in the very last moments after an excruciating wait for the TV ref and some hairy moments trying to get the ball off the pitch. Naturally that game is remembered for Rob Howley's opportunist winner and Joe Worsley's remorseless tackling, just as the former game is etched into the mind as Nick Greenstock's finest hour, but in reality they were, as all such victories are, team triumphs. In the same way matches like last week's against Glasgow are team defeats: it is invidious to pick out individuals for comment in such a game. Can we hope for another against-the-odds victory this Sunday? It seems unlikely, but then it seemed unlikely back in 1996. Perhaps we can hope for some small element of redemption, at least, a chance for the team to show that Glasgow was an aberration, that they are better than that. What better team to do it against than Toulouse? And what better way for we, the supporters, to see them doing it? It won't help us qualify, but it might make last week's disaster slightly more bearable. And help us look forward to future triumphs with more optimism.

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