It’s that time of the year again, and now we’ve got a riveting sports drama here to make us feel motivated to work hard and become special (even if we’re spending all day in bed). The formulaic sports drama tends to always do well, like, even if it’s bad, you’ll walk away from it with some sort of motivation or inspiration to be better. So here we are with yet another Korean drama that I’m hoping will be something like the iconic Racket Boys. The Winning Try tells the story of a legendary rugby player, Ga-Ram, who won in 2022 against team Japan. However, 3 years later, we find out that he’s retired because he was caught in a doping scandal. Now, we already have the mystery of his doping scandal, but to make the show all the more fun, Ga-Ram joins a sports school as the new rugby coach. In the first two episodes, we see the resistance to a coach who apparently betrayed his team at the peak of his career, but will he melt the hearts of the boys who really just want to play rugby? Let’s find out in the first two episodes.
Spoiler Alert
How Does Ga-Ram Get To Stay On Board?
The Winning Try episode 1 introduces Ju Ga-Ram at the height of his career, winning against the Japanese team before all hell breaks loose. The next thing we know, we’re transported to Hanyang Physical Education High School, where the rugby team’s coach is out of action and the team is struggling to make ends meet. This is not your ordinary school, since this is a sports school, and all of these kids want to get into college through their sports. The same applies to the rugby team, which keeps getting neglected by the many villains of the show, led by the vice principal. Fortunately for the team, the principal herself is on their side, and she’s the one who brings in Ju Ga-Ram to coach them out of the blue. A lot of the first episode just goes into introducing us to the many characters of the show. The 7 rugby players and some of the other educators who don’t want the rugby team to survive, especially not with Ga-Ram at the helm.
At the beginning of the episode, the team’s meant to play a game of rugby, but the coach of the opposing team wants to abandon the game because they don’t have a coach. If anybody is injured, it would be dangerous for him. The captain of the team, Seong-Jun, who seems to take not only the game, but life way too seriously, begs the coach to let them play, saying they have permission, but he refuses to partake. Finally, Ga-Ram shows up, but Seong-Jun is the one who decides against playing, saying they don’t have a coach. I did say he takes everything too seriously, so obviously he won’t agree to be coached by someone who doped. But Ga-Ram isn’t one to give up easily either.
Meanwhile, we’re introduced to the shooting star (See what I did there, haha), Bae I-Ju. Not only is she a coach, but she’s an active athlete herself. Ga-Ram and I-Ju have a history. After his incident, he left her without warning, no word about where he was going or what had happened. It’s been 3 years since, and I-Ju wants to kill the man for ruining a 10-year-long relationship (yikes).
But it’s not just I-Ju and the captain who are against Ga-Ram’s presence at the school. Half the other educators, including the vice president, Nak-Gyun (a fellow coach), and Heung-Nam, who seems to be like an assistant to the vice president, also don’t want Ga-Ram around. But more importantly, they just don’t see the point of a rugby team, since they haven’t won in a whole year. They mess with the morale of the team, putting them through terrible routines and even suspending Ga-Ram. While Seong-Jun is pretending not to like the dude, the truth is he is his number 1 fan. But it doesn’t help because even after getting his shoulder treated by Ga-Ram, the next day, he and the team get into a tussle with another team, making things much worse. But the final straw is when the boys aren’t allowed to put their rugby ball on the table during a rite of passage ceremony. This angers the team, but Ga-Ram is the one who takes real action. He uses that same ball and throws it across the field straight into a pig face cake that the vice principal is bowing to (funny). The epilogue of the first episode shows that Ga-Ram still cares about I-Ju, and there’s some deep backstory here.
Does Ga-Ram Coach The Team?
The Winning Try episode 2 begins with Ga-Ram asking people to vote against his dismissal, and the vice principal and his team are trying to convince people to get him dismissed. Even Seong-Jun votes in favor of the dismissal, but the coaches all vote against it because they don’t want the rugby team to join their sports (wow). Next thing we know, the team is getting properly coached by Ga-Ram. He’s making them exercise up and down the stairs, etc. The team also starts putting more effort into playing well, but the bad guys are planning something big, a match against a team that is impossible to defeat. They’re not just number one, but they’re also much bigger than the Hanyang boys.
But Seong-Jun doesn’t want to lose. He decides to walk away from practice, and we learn a bit about him as an individual. The boy is famous as a rugby genius, but he has a sibling who lives abroad. Surprisingly, when he goes home, he has to make a call to his mum to find out she’s not in the country, but she’s gone off to see his brother (also, that landline was so odd to see). It looks like he might be the neglected child, because he’s good at what he does and knows how to look after himself. Ga-Ram goes and sulks to some banana milk and fried chicken (yeah, he doesn’t drink or smoke). The next day, he’s at the building where Seong-Jun lives with a megaphone, creating a ruckus. Ga-Ram tells Seong-Jun to join him in playing rugby. All he wants is for him to have fun playing the game he truly loves. The vice principal tries to talk to him later about the dismissal, but he’s interrupted by Ga-Ram himself.
At the end of The Winning Try episode 2, it’s time to play the losing match. The first half of the match goes awfully, and Seong-Jun is terribly disappointed at the scoreboard, where they’re still at 0. However, Ga-Ram tells the team that he’s going to show them how to lose well. Ga-Ram is a genuine coach, and he’s going to get this team going places soon. The episode ends with Seong-Jun managing to finally get a point on the scoreboard, and this is enough to motivate not just the team but everybody watching. Seong-Jun even does Ga-Ram’s famous hand gesture.
In the epilogue, we see Ga-Ram talk to Tae-Pung, one of the players. He’s planning on transferring schools because the old coach has got him an offer. He believes the team at Hanyang is basically useless. Tae-Pung is the newest player on the team, but he’s already given up. Ga-Ram tells the boy he can decide what he wants to do, and tells him he’s worked hard so far. Before parting ways, he tells the boy that his ankles are in danger from the way he plays. He even tells him how to look after himself, a final goodbye? Or the reason Tae-Pung will stay back? We’ll have to wait to find out.
