NZ Warriors: My faith is running out – Stuff.co.nz

READER REPORT:

SAM NIGHTINGALE

Last updated12:01, May 1 2017

Getty Images

Warriors player Kieran Foran gives a somewhat halfhearted wave to the crowd after a narrow win over the Sydney Roosters.

A few years ago I wrote a philosophy essay on a theory of wellbeing known as "hedonism".

Hedonism states that what makes a life go well for an individual is the greatest balance of pleasure over pain:that we can know what is good for us and what is bad for us through the experience of pleasure or pain, and we can do what is good for us and what is bad for us by actions that produce pleasure or pain.

Watching the New Zealand Warriors for the past fiveyears and counting has left me seriously doubting the team'spositive effects on my wellbeing.

Watching the Warriors every week is of course only a microcosm of my life over this time, butnonetheless there areflow-on effects every time that 80-minute siren sounds.

READ MORE: * Defence key for win: Kearney * Warriors hope performances lead to points * Crazy times good for no-one * Lolohea'sdays at Warriors numbered

I try to remember those times where the pleasure of watching the Warriors far outweighed the pain the evening of 2 October2011 when the Warriors took on the Sea Eagles in their first grand final appearance in nineyears, for example.

The Captain Cook Tavern in Dunedin was as full as a night during O week, despite the fact thatit was dangerously close to the end of year exams of the hundreds of students whopacked in to watch. And it didnt take long for them, or me, to maybe wish that we hadnt.

Im sure many who watched that night felt pain of the sort any loyal sports fan would feel, with the pleasure of the thought of winning the grand finale a distant memory.

And so it began. The vicious cycle of weekly hope ranging from pre-season to pre-game expectation.

And so it continues - fiveyears later and counting. The number of times I have turned the TV off feeling pain has sadly far outnumbered the times I have turned it off feeling pleasure. Yet for some reason I keep turning it on the next week.

Maybe it is because I know that my late friend, and flatmate, would be there on the couch watching, no matter the score, until the final hooter. Maybe it is because I hope to feel that pleasure of the Warriors winning, and winning in a league full of Australian teams for there is hardly a more pleasurable feeling, right? Maybe it's because I like feeling that pain of being let down time and time again... but I dont think so.

After watching the Warriors stumble and fumble their way to two losses in a row, something inside me was triggered probably my pleasure and pain receptors.

I simply couldnt do it, I couldnt bring myself to watch them take on the Roosters at 4pm on a Sunday.

Instead I found myself writing this.

At halftime we were up 12-4. When I saw that online I felt hope, hope that we would win. This faded to that familiar feeling of pain when it was 12-12 with less than 10 minutesto play.

The next time I checked the score was when I hadnearly finished writing this. 14-13 to the Warriors at full time, on an 80th minute penalty no less.

I dont think I want to know the details, and now I am just lost. I dont know whether to feel pain that I missed watching the game when I nearly always do, pain that I will have to wait another week to watch them (twodue to the international window), or pleasure that we managed a win; but pleasure which can only be held in check by the knowledge of the inevitable cycle of the last fiveyears and counting.

Hedonism states that what makes a life go well for an individual is the greatest balance of pleasure over pain:that we can know what is good for us and what is bad for us through the experience of pleasure or pain, and we can do what is good for us and what is bad for us by actions that produce pleasure or pain.

So maybe I should just be a Storm supporter.

-Stuff Nation

View all contributions

Read the rest here:

NZ Warriors: My faith is running out - Stuff.co.nz