Rarely has one try been so divisive amongst Bear supporters.
When Thomas Ceyte crossed the whitewash in the 6th minute of added on time to finally extinguish the flickering candle of our European Champions Cup and Challenge Cup hopes, the outpouring of emotion on social media had more angles than a Bears training session.
Were we too naive? Should we have put the ball out of play and banked 3 points? Was our game management wrong again? Or did we ultimately go out playing the Bears way?
There seems to be two main schools of thought amongst fans, the first being that this was always going to be an uphill struggle. Let’s face it, we gave Leinster huge problems in BS3 without a host of injured players, we lost A.J MacGinty for the majority of the game and had to play our best centre at fly-half. We fought hard against La Rochelle, we defeated a strong Benetton Treviso team full of Italian internationals and came close to the greatest of comebacks away to Clermont Auvergne.
The second is that we should be much more competitive at this level. Pat Lam has everything at his disposal for the Bears to be successful not just domestically but in Europe too. We have world-class facilities at the training ground, a stadium that is one of the best arenas to perform in and a squad full of elite athletes. Some don’t buy into the injury list either; Lam chose to work with a smaller squad this season believing the Academy players to be ready to step up. Has this proven to be the wrong policy?
Personally I believe the Champions Cup was never a competition we would win this season, in fact with the weight of French argent and the strength of the Irish teams, it will be a mammoth task for any English team to be victorious in the foreseeable future. The Challenge Cup might have been more achievable but despite the mountain of adversity we have faced, I have been immensely proud of the way we have performed in Europe.
We now have time to get our injured players back to full fitness and launch a complete assault on our ultimate goal this season: to win the Gallagher Premiership.
Up The Bears!!!
You can listen to Bears Beyond The Gate on all major podcast platforms, including Apple, Spotify and Buzzsprout.