Funny thing, loyalty. It can take a lifetime to earn, and then one bad game and ... poof! It’s all over. Take the poor Queensland Reds. I’m not sure who looked more despondent after their latest humiliation – the players or the few fans they have left.

A true team faithful can handle a lot, but losing 10 games in a row and then going down 92-3 in their final game is asking a lot of any fan. With the exception of maybe the Bunnies, fans don’t tend to stand by teams that are consistently bad.

And at least South Sydney had an excuse – it’s hard to attract and keep up-and-coming talent when your club is out of money. But the Reds? They have enough in the mix to at least put on a bloody good fight.

If anything, though, the weekend proved the fight had gone out of them, and if there is one thing a faithful fan finds hardest to take, it’s seeing their team give up. And Eddie Jones’s boys gave up in spectacular fashion.

It got me thinking about loyalty and how far we take it. Take the average tipping competition, for instance. Do you tip your team every week out of loyalty to your boys, or do you let greed and the thrill of winning corrupt you into choosing the team you think will actually win?

In my opinion, those who choose the latter option have as much loyalty to their team as Mick Jagger had for Jerry Hall. My husband has no real sporting loyalty. He’s one of those bandwagon types – if they are winning, he’s all for them.

Start to lose and he’s off to hitch another ride. When we were discussing the Pies v Crows match on Saturday, I mentioned that I thought Adelaide would come out on top.

This was not a prospect I relished – not only because I had tipped my boys, but because it would have given Crowboy a week of bragging rights. When he asked me why I didn’t tip the Crows if I thought they were going to win, I couldn’t believe it.

Honestly, I totally understand how Paris felt when the judge told her she was going to jail. For fans like me, when it comes to your team, you don’t tip who you think will win – you tip your team and just hope that it will all work out all right.

That’s bad news if you are a Richmond, Demons, Reds or Roosters fan at the moment, but sometimes, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. As long as your team has fight, as long as the players give it their best, you stand by them, put up with the crap you get in the office and bide your time.

Because eventually, your team will reward you for that loyalty and bring home the big one. Which gives you the chance to shake your fist at the disbelievers, and a whole year of being able to say, “I told you so”.

Even though it has been a long, long time since I have had that right, I’m going to keep holding out. For some, however, loyalty is a fickle beast. My friend Sam is a firm supporter of the Tigers, purely out of loyalty to her partner.

She doesn’t really care if Richmond wins or loses, but every Monday she comes into work prepared to defend their dismal weekend. She says this is because they have fight.

They are young and they are losing, but at least they are giving it a go. It’s the same reason Queenslanders support the Maroons year after year, even when all looks lost. Yes, state loyalty has something to do with it, and what Queenslander doesn’t like sticking it to a southerner from time to time?

But it’s also because the Maroons are famous for their never-say-die attitude, and at the end of the day that’s all we ask. It’s not the scoreline that counts, it’s not about who won and it’s not history that makes us loyal.

It’s about the hope our teams give us that next season will be better. They may be down, but they’re certainly not out, and every loss reignites their hunger to win. That is the hope the Reds fans lost on the weekend, and with it went their loyalty to a team that can’t be loyal to them.