It can be hard to stick with your team in the tough times, even if that's what makes the good times so good when they eventually come around. Every day it's hard is one day closer to when it's easy, and you can't know how good winning can feel until you've lost a few times.
That's what we all tell ourselves anyway, but when your team has a bad game that turns into a bad month that turns into a bad season, it does test the faith.
It has to happen that way sometimes, otherwise what we feel wouldn't be faith at all, but for the Wests Tigers, those bad seasons have turned into a bad decade and then some.
The times have been tough for so long the Tigers fans in your life are probably beginning to question if it'll ever turn the other way again. Even the true believers have a breaking point, and once it's been passed there's no turning back.
Luke Brooks, who this week mentioned he may explore leaving the Tigers after nine years with the club, was once the truest of those believers. In fact, few players have ever believed in the possibility of the Tigers and that a brighter future was just around the corner more than Brooks, even against long odds.
It was never just words from Brooks either. Back in December 2018, when he signed the rich, five-year deal that has since become an albatross around the neck of player and club, he didn't have to do it – or at least, he didn't have to do it with Wests Tigers.
The other members of the club's big four — James Tedesco, Mitchell Moses and Aaron Woods — were all long gone. Brooks was the last man standing, the sole survivor of the golden era that never arrived, and he could have followed them out the door to just about any team he wanted.
Back then, Brooks was looking a lot like the player he was promised to be as a junior, when he was saddled with Andrew Johns comparisons that did nothing but apply a crushing expectation he could never match.
That sort of hyperbole can destroy careers before they even begin, but Brooks had managed to weather the storm and play some terrific football under then-coach Ivan Cleary, winning halfback of the year and finishing third in the overall Dally M count.
He could have just about picked his spot after a season like that, especially given the premium that's always on top halfbacks. But Brooks stayed because, he said, he wanted to be there when the club finally ended their finals drought. The rugby league world was at his feet, but he didn't want the world — he wanted the Tigers.
He was a local boy, a Tiger to the bone, and he wanted to be a part of it when the Tigers were flying and the hills at Leichhardt and Campbelltown were heaving again, because he believed in his club and they, in return, believed in him.
Four years later, that belief has become a prison, for both Brooks and the Tigers, one they seemingly cannot escape.
That return to the finals never came as the club lurched from rebuild to rebuild as if cursed to start all over again every time they made the smallest progress.
Brooks has never stopped believing in the Tigers. The cynics might say that's because of the size of his contract and the fact he couldn't get another like it anywhere else, but other players have gotten out of deals like that before and still walked away with minimal dollars lost.
Even as the coaches changed, even as the Tigers struggled to put talent around him, even as other clubs came knocking when he could have agitated for a release, Brooks was sure the Tigers were his team, that this was his place.
The Tigers never stopped believing in Brooks, even as he struggled to get near that 2018 form again, even as his play more than once warranted a stint in reserve grade, even as other clubs came knocking and they could have cut bait with yet another fresh start. They were sure he was their man, and that this was the rock on which so much could be built.
In the end, it feels like both parties backed the wrong horse. There was a time when Brooks could have been one of the best halfbacks in the world. It happened for a while, we saw it right in front of us, and the Tigers believed in what they saw, which was proof there was a hell of a player inside of Luke Brooks.
So it must be hard for Brooks to think about playing against the Mitchell Moses-led Parramatta Eels at Leichhardt on Saturday night without wondering, even just for a second, what might have happened for him if he'd left the Tigers at some point along the way.
Moses did, and became a State of Origin halfback who made several trips to the finals. Tedesco did, and he won multiple premierships while blossoming into arguably the finest player of his generation. Even Woods, who seemed to see the air come out of his tyres the second he departed the Tigers, played in multiple finals series and Test matches since leaving.
Could that have been Brooks? Could those things have happened to him? He will never know. Neither will we.
Likewise, the Tigers must hold at least a moment of regret at not jettisoning Brooks when they had the opportunity. Even if they'd moved him on to Newcastle, who were keen on securing Brooks over the summer, the club would be in a very different place just by the virtue of making a clean break to the era that came before and towards something different. It doesn't even need to be better, it just has to be different.
There will be a time when it gets better and the Tigers become successful again because even the longest winter cannot last forever. There are some solid pieces in place, like Doueihi and Jackson Hastings and incoming pair Isaiah Papali'i and Api Koroisau.
And while most players are what they are at 27 with almost 200 NRL games to their name, maybe Brooks can show glimpses of his old form again. A turnaround can happen faster than you think and who knows what the future can bring.
There were reports last week that Brooks would be dropped to reserve grade for the first time in his career which turned out to be unfounded, but if they were true it wouldn't have been a slight on Brooks, but a touch of mercy.
It could have begun the journey towards what Brooks and the Tigers both really need — a change, a fresh start, and a chance to begin anew.
And therein lies the real heartbreak of the Luke Brooks story at the Wests Tigers. It isn't that Brooks didn't fulfil the ludicrous expectations of his youth, or that he's never hit the heights of 2018 since, or even that the Tigers weren't able to get the best out of the only one of their star quartet who chose them.
It's that, in all likelihood, Brooks will not be around when the Tigers are contenders again. He has served through so many of the hard times, but will not get the good times that make those hard times worthwhile. They gave each other everything, but it wasn't enough.
Barring the kind of miracle that has always eluded them both, the player's faith in the club, like the club's faith in the player, will not ever be rewarded. Not everyone makes it to the promised land. Sometimes, people are left behind on the long journey. You can believe that.
