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.

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.