Sportsmen and women need to be able to cope with failure – for most they will spend far longer failing than succeeding, writes Russ Bravo.
It’s a painful but common experience – and even Man City and Man Utd players have had to taste its bitterness over the last week or two.
As sports fans, we know this all too well. When I was at school everyone into football wanted to support one of two teams: Man Utd or Liverpool. Why? They were the most successful – they seemed to win most of the games they played, and regularly won domestic Cups and titles, as well as sometimes succeeding in Europe.
We were glory hunters, really. Most of us had very little connection with either team: we lived in Sussex in the south of England. Most of us had never even been to Manchester or Liverpool.
So I tired of the trophy hunting when I only ever saw ‘my team’ on telly, and in my teens began following my local side Brighton & Hove Albion. Hardly a football hotbed at the time, the club’s trophy cabinet was rather bare, and it had spent much of its life scuffling around the lower divisions of the football league.
A brief taste of glory in the late 70s saw the side promoted to the old Division 1, in pre-Premier League days, and even reach the FA Cup Final in 1983, narrowly missing silverware in an heroic 2-2 draw with – yes, you guessed it, Manchester Utd, before being thumped 4-0 in the replay.
Apart from a disappointing play-off final defeat to Notts County in 1991, it was all largely downhill from then on – a last-gasp draw at Hereford Utd saved us from disappearing into non-League, our beloved Goldstone Ground was sold to developers and we were exiled for several seasons playing home games 80 miles away in Gillingham.
Lots of disappointment and very little glory was the lot of the Brighton fan for most of the 90s.
Returning to a converted athletics track stadium in Brighton in August 1999, It’s been an upward path since, with a climb up the leagues while at Withdean, the opening of the Amex stadium in 2011, and the holy grail of promotion to the Premier League achieved in May 2017.
We’ve probably got a few glory hunters of our own now, but for most longstanding Brighton fans, comparative success now is all the sweeter for many years of failure, poor football and regular disappointment.
And that’s the lot of most footballers, and most sportsmen and women. Very brief tastes of glory – if you’re lucky – alongside failure, defeat, injury and mediocrity.
Successful athletes who win titles, break records, achieve their goals and make the most of their potential will often point out that – alongside talent and hard work – learning from the tough times has proved vital. No pain, no gain.
How high achievers like Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford bounce back from recent European disappointments says as much about them as their goals and individual brilliance. Coping with failure builds character, perseverance and stamina.
Nelson Mandela said: "Do not judge me by my successes; judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." and Maya Angelou adds: “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it."
Michael Jordan’s take on it was: "I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
And Jesus told his disciples: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12: 24)