Not trying is a puzzling concept in sport. The great basketball player, Michael Jordan, even wrote a book about it once, around the time in the mid-Nineties when, in the harshest spotlight, he tried and failed to carve out a career as a Major League Baseball player. He called the book I Can’t Accept Not Trying.
Generally, trying is the whole point of sport. To many of us, it is really the only point. It is more important than the winning or the losing. Jordan didn’t fail when he got no further than playing Double-A baseball for the Birmingham Barons, because he gave it everything.