No horseplay as Bigley’s beef with missing Lions looking to be rectified

UKAmericanSportsFans.com had the pleasure of teaming up with Chris Bigley on Twitter last Friday night when he was unavailable to don  Mersey Tigers’ colours against Worcester Wolves.

This Friday he will be back, and this time against London Lions, a side which they ran extremely close for over thirty minutes of the game nearly three weeks ago, and almost secured their first victory of the year. Bigley also missed that one, but whilst it grates on him

“First and foremost losing is tough – whether I’m there or not it ruins my night.

“I’ve said a few times, if I had a dog, I’d have kicked it 25 times this season. The frustration is a strange feeling, it’s not even so much as “if I were there we’d have done this better” or “I could have won us that game”, which has been said to me a number of times, but I don’t think like that at all. The way I see it is it’s my job to compliment the guys, if I can help here or there – well that’s Coach’s decision and it’s something that he has to decide, that’s his job as the leader of our team – so for me the major frustration is that I can’t share what the guys are going through.

“If they’re getting beat up badly and I’m not there, I want to be there to be beat up on myself too. I don’t want to be exempt from the group, I don’t want to make my excuses and point the finger – I want to go through exactly what the team goes through. That’s not to say I like losing, but if we’re going to lose I’d rather do it with the guys, rather than watch a statcast.”

Has he been able to take the information away and use it to the advantage of the team? Chris is not so sure that the statcast can help in scenarios such as that, believing it’s all down to seeing it in the flesh.

“In terms of watching game stats, to me it’s not a tell-all picture of the game. Obviously it will give you a shot chart, tell you where we gave the most points up, who won on the glass, but to me it doesn’t provide everything. Game tape of teams aren’t hard to come by, you don’t need to know a guy any more, all the Sky games are on YouTube.

“Watching that can tell you which hand guys like to go to, who goes to the glass, which defence teams employ and when, the sets they run etc. That is the level of preparation you have to go to, so for me I watch statcast purely because I want to know how the guys are doing. I save 90% of the research for tape. ”

Friday presents what could be one of three last realistic chances to win this season (two home games against Durham to come), and speaking with Chris shortly after the defeat last time out against Lions, he was infuriated at himself for missing the previous encounter.

The question is what can they do as a full squad, including new arrival Daniel Brito, to make that difference count?

“The team emphasis is to continually get better. That’s what we’re working toward,” said the Tigers’ forward, “Personally I like to just know my role. If I have to score the ball, OK, if I’ve got to go rebound, fine, provided I know what’s expected of me, I’ll run through a wall to get it done.

“I guess that’s preparation itself, knowing what you have to do week on week to beat a team. Maybe we haven’t done enough of it, given the win-loss column. But of course how close we got last time is in back of people’s minds, but we’d be fools to think it will happen again just like that. Yeah, use it as the fuel, you’ve got a chance to get after these guys, but don’t make it the whole damn fire.

“They’re a good team, they’re as athletic as anyone in the league, we have to be meticulous in our preparations. Friday’s game started on Monday. That is how we have to approach it.”

The added advantage could be the home crowd, and a good strong showing from the Greenbank Ultras may be the key to changing the history books from being rewritten come the end of the season, and the man from Liverpool feels he has a lot to owe them in return.

“I love playing at home, it does give me an extra boost knowing that there’s people there from my home town coming to support us despite the fact we’ve not given them a win yet. It goes a long way with me, and it’s something I want to repay so desperately. So does that give me an extra 3/4%? Yeah I’d say so.”

• Catch Mersey Tigers against London Lions at Knowsley Leisure and Culture Park, Friday 22nd February, 7:30pm tip-off. See merseytigers.com for more information.