There’s always next year: what drives the fans of teams that always lose?

It’s the biggest event on the rugby league calendar. No, not Origin. Nor the seemingly inevitable Panthers v Storm grand final. Not even the NRL’s now-yearly foray into Las Vegas.

At Campbelltown Sports Stadium in Sydney’s golden southwest on a balmy Friday night, the entire year has come down to this – the Spoon Bowl. The eternally battling Wests Tigers are facing off against the Parramatta Eels to decide who will ‘win’ the wooden spoon – the dubious unofficial honour given to the team that finishes last on the competition ladder at the end of the season.

For long-suffering fans of both teams, it’s deja vu all over again. The Tigers men’s team have won the spoon for the last two years in a row, and have not played finals footy since 2011. The Eels men’s team, who made the grand final only two years ago, have won 14 spoons in their history – the most of any team.

Inside the stadium, though, the atmosphere is electric – halfway between a grand final and the last week of school, when everyone gets a bit silly. Fans have made their own spoon costumes and Spoon Bowl diamante jackets. The half-time race between the Tigers and Eels mascots gets a rapturous reception.

For Adam*, known to his Instagram fans as @DepressedTigersFan, the Spoon Bowl is as close as it comes to free therapy. In what feels like an especially cruel cosmic joke, he missed almost the entire first half – “someone just had to break down on the M5”. He arrived just in time to watch the Tigers fall apart in the second half, eventually losing 60-26 and claiming their third spoon on the trot.

Being a fan of a perennially losing team is not a ticket to an easy life. They endure years of heartache, witness historic floggings, and have their hopes dashed time and again. So what keeps them turning up?

“It’s blind loyalty,” he says. “It can barely be explained. For me, there’s this desire to get something that’s rare. [For fans of] teams that are on the bottom of the ladder, the feeling of joy is so much stronger when they actually do something. Success will feel so much better for us than, say, the Panthers or Storm.”

Adam, whose name has been changed “because I don’t need angry Penrith or Parra enthusiasts coming after me”, has been churning out fatalistic memes about the Tigers’ woes since 2022. He takes inspiration from depressed fan accounts of struggling teams around the world, like the Baltimore Orioles – “God, they sucked for a long time” – as well as his fellow Tigers supporters online.

“I always like checking comments sections and forums after the Tigers lose, because it’s a community,” he says. “Knowing that people feel the same things you do – anger, disappointment, disbelief – is a nice thing.”

Asked to describe being a North Melbourne fan in one word, Evie Potter says: “Sisyphus.” (Sisyphus was an ancient Greek king who was condemned by the gods to eternally roll a heavy rock up a hill, only for it to roll down again as he nears the top.)

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Evie and her husband are loyal Kangaroos fans, which has not been an easy thing in recent times. North’s AFL men’s team has finished either last or second-last on the ladder for the last five years. Of the 107 first-grade games they have played during that period, they have won 15. The Roos’ women’s side, however, has played finals footy nearly every year since joining the AFLW in 2019.

“You have to have a certain level of patience. I like to make fun of other teams’ fans for not having our staying power,” she says. “North being bad, that can come and go, but the petty grudges that all teams have can sustain you. The fact that Essendon, one of our rivals, missed the finals yet again – I’ll take a hater’s joy out of that.”

Evie has formed a band of friends with other dedicated North supporters – “a support group”, in her words – that makes the rollercoaster ride of fandom much more pleasant than it would be otherwise.

“It makes it so much more bearable to have equally funny and passionate long-suffering friends,” she says. “It’s absolutely the best part of it.”

Brian Rix and his wife Shirley worked for the Fitzroy Lions before the team relocated to Brisbane at the end of the 1996 season.

“We actually flew over to Fremantle to watch their last game, knowing full well they were going to get absolutely pumped. But that’s what you do,” Brian says.

Brian is now involved with the Castlemaine Magpies, a VFL team with no shortage of wooden spoons of which to boast. From 2017 to 2023, the Magpies’ men’s team only managed seven wins from 102 games in the Bendigo Football League.

“In the country it’s a bit different,” Brian says. “The result doesn’t matter so much as the community element. You go to the ground and stand around with old fellas who’ve probably been there for 70 years. It’s great for the local kids to be involved – it gives them something to look forward to, it gives them an outlet that keeps them fit and healthy. It’s better than looking at a computer screen all day.”

That sense of community – of being bound together, even by common suffering – is one of the funny things about backing a struggling team. The moments of passion and joy that make sport so good to watch can come from unlikely places.

“You’re watching a game, you might be 10 goals down, but when one of the young players kicks a goal – just one goal – they go berserk,” Brian says. “Little wins like that, they mean a lot.”