Mild Rover wrote:
Aside from the stuff they’ve won in the last decade though, the choker narrative isn’t typically applied when they go close - because of all their previous success. Like when Leeds made the GF a couple of years ago and lost, that wasn’t widely seen as bottle. Maybe it was applied to Saints when they lost 4 GFs in a row, although they may have won a CC during that period (cba to check).
The bottle thing is just to try hide how ingrained the advantage of the dominant teams is and portray their achievements as representing something more meaningful than competent use of greater resource… oh yeah, and to intensify the disappointment of our rivals -
there’s so little to celebrate in SL that solace in others’ misery is entirely justified
, imo.
One of the major aspects of Leeds SL success was that they were able to bury their long perceived 'bottlers' tag (around 2004) which had stuck to them for decades. Hetherington and T. Smith were able to alter the mindset of the entire club turning them from perennially falling short, when there was a trophy on the line, to becoming serial winners and in so doing became one of the clubs expected to win when it matters most (2017 GF against Cas being a case in point).
I guess it shows it is possible to take that path, although no other club in the SL era have managed to replicate the feat, with Wire and ourselves being the prime culprits in failing in this regard.
As for the 'solace in other's misery', I would agree, it's become the refuge of the rest of us! I try to avoid it as I'm not, in general, overly keen on personal negative traits (I wanted Cas to triumph in 2017 for instance once we had lost to Leeds the previous week) but there is a certain warm comfort in feeling that someone is no better than us in the final reckoning. This of course becomes particularly prevalent when the team in question is your chief rival! However distasteful it may be, as a personal trait, it is difficult (if not nigh on impossible) to avoid it when said team in question has been 'the enemy' since your schooldays!! Old habits die hard and all that!
I guess from our perspective, we may as well take 'solace in other's misery' (if that does indeed come to pass) seeing how we have been wallowing in our own personal misery from the moment this season kicked off back in February!
