As I was waiting for this game to be played I often think back to this article below titled 'Sport's Fans...The agony and estacy.' published in The West Australian on 4 August, 2018 and the research it cites about sport's fans, their happiness and how that will be affected by the team they support and whether they win or lose.
The Wallabies were expected to win this game by a long shot. The Pumas have always been a gutsy rugby team that keep on trying. Fast forward to Saturday night. The Wallabies unexpectedly lost this game on home ground. Argentina had won their first game in Australia in 35 years and Australia's first loss to Argentina since 1983. So the loss or win was very significant indeed.
In the Rugby Championship tournament this year, the All Blacks beat the Wallabies at home in Australia and in New Zealand and won the Bledisloe Cup for something like the 17 th year in a row. They then went on to beat the Pumas in New Zealand. The Wallabies beat the Springboks at home maintaining the Mandela Plate. The Pumas beat the Springboks in Argentina and the Wallabies in Australia.
So how does all this make me feel ? I was certainly pissed last night that the Wallabies lost to the Pumas at the last home game in Australia for this year. We are currently on the bottom of the Rugby Championship table. These feelings will be exasperated as the next two Wallabies' games are away in South Africa and Argentina and the Wallabies don't have a great record on the road against South Africa. Why I am pissed is about the quality of the game and players and is beyond the scope of this post.
Yesterday, the most unbelievable thing happened in rugby and it was a day of underdogs. Before the telecast of the Wallabies and the Pumas game in Australia, the Springboks beat the All Blacks at home in New Zealand. For anyone who is a fan of southern hemisphere rugby and rugby in general know that was truly a great win indeed for the Springboks considering the All Blacks dominance in world rugby in recent years. This made the Wallabies' loss a little bit easier, knowing that the All Blacks' fans would be hurting perhaps more than us by this loss.
Although the research below is for soccer I agree with many of the findings based on my experiences of being a rugby fan and that the outcome of matches in which a fan is highly emotionally invested in their team do affect our happiness even if the loss is expected and only for a short time.
I agree with the researchers that the negative affects of losing a game are greater than the positive impact of winning a game. However, this article did not distinguish whether this positive impact was for a a weekly game, the finals or the grand final or an international match against long term rivals.
The researchers ask a valid question 'Is it all worth it?' Being a fan of rugby has brought many benefits to my life which have been discussed in other posts on this blog. I also agree with the researchers there are many benefits to being a sport's fan including inter generational family connections, making friends and sharing experiences with other like minded fans including travelling to watch games.
Being a sport's fan is accepting that things in life such as games of sport do not always go our way. The win by the Pumas against the Wallabies, their first in Australia in 35 years teaches us not to give up. Being a fan of a team is being able to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on to the next game with the team with grace. Yes, it is all worth it.
'Sport's Fans...The agony and estacy.' published in The West Australian on 4 August, 2018. (no copyright infringement intended)
Many people feel devastated after their favourite team loses. Sometimes they have trouble sleeping (yes, I speak from personal experience) and that raises some legitimate questions: Why suffer? Is it even rational to be a sports fan?
Recent research suggests that it might not be. On average, soccer — the most popular sport on the planet — makes people a lot less happy. The lesson is that if you’re strongly attached to your team, you might be better off if you decide to disengage — starting right now.
Peter Dolton and George MacKerron, of the University of Sussex in Britain, linked several large data sets. To measure people’s happiness, they used millions of reports from tens of thousands of people who recorded their levels of happiness at various times in the day and who also reported on what they were doing during those times.
They also used data on all English and Scottish soccer matches during the 2011, 2012 and 2013 seasons. The data included the date, the odds and the results.
By connecting the happiness data with the soccer data, they could see how people’s happiness was affected by the outcome of the match. They made reasonable assumptions about which team people were most likely to support, based on where they lived and which matches they had attended in the past.
The basic finding was clear. A victory by the local team had a positive effect on people’s happiness — but it was much smaller than the negative effect of a loss. In addition, the positive effect of a victory did not last as long as the negative effect of a loss. Because the misery of a loss is so much greater than the joy of a win, soccer matches made people a lot less happy on balance.
For those who actually attended matches, both wins and losses had a significantly larger impact on happiness (not surprisingly).
But the difference between the two persisted: if you took the trouble to go to the stadium, your suffering after a loss would be much greater than your pleasure after a win. Dolton and MacKerron also investigated the effects of expectations. Not surprisingly, they found that a loss had a more severe negative impact on people’s happiness when their team was expected to win than when it was expected to lose.
Importantly, however, they found that people really did suffer when their team lost, even if it was anticipated. So fans didn’t adapt to expectations.
If we put all of the data together, the negative emotional consequences of losing turn out to be far higher than the positive emotional consequences of winning.
That raises a question. Unless your team is bound to win most of the time, isn’t it a mistake to go to games, or to make an emotional investment in your side? Shouldn’t we all be finding better things to do?
To their credit, Dolton and MacKerron aren’t sure. They note that many people like having a sense of camaraderie; their data does not measure that, or the benefits of cheering for one’s team in conjunction with others. In addition, it can be a lot of fun to feel curiosity and anticipation.
There’s also the question of memories. Maybe the anguish of losses fades over time and what remains are positive recollections of the experience. (Croatian and British fans, take heart.)
Being a fan also provides a connection with children, parents, grandchildren and grandparents. That’s gratifying, even meaningful. True, the distress of a loss might be acute but perhaps it is outweighed by the overall benefits of fandom.
There’s also a question whether the study’s findings generalise to other sports such as baseball, football, hockey or tennis.
Maybe not. But in view of decades of work in behavioural science on the subject of “loss aversion”, it’s not exactly surprising to learn that for sports fans, the negative emotional impact of losses is a lot bigger than the positive emotional impact of wins.
For those whose spirits sometimes rise but mostly fall with the fortunes of their favourite team, it makes sense to ask: Is it really worth it?
