The Winning Try episode 1 review: humiliation, corruption, and the man who throws the ball anyway

Episode 1 of The Winning Try starts with sweat and silence. The kind that settles when a team’s spirit has already rotted from the inside. The rugby club at the heart of the drama performs poorly, but worse than that, it has already been abandoned. At school, in competition, even among themselves, they barely hold together. This is a team stripped of pride, with no reason left to fight for anything.

When the school threatens to shut them down, it feels more like confirmation than surprise. Kang Jeong-hyo, the school’s director and the only one willing to stake her authority on them, interrupts the decision and offers a name. A former pro, once celebrated and later erased. His career ended in disgrace after a doping scandal, and he vanished. Now he’s back, not for redemption, but for a team no one else wants.

A soaked uniform and nowhere to hang it

The team? In The Winning Try, not even the team welcomes him. They call him a traitor, a juicer. Even to his face. They laugh when he speaks. They treat him like a walking punchline, a man whose only legacy is the syringe that took him down. To them, he’s a loser clinging to the edge of relevance, and they want no part in whatever he's trying to build.

Instead, they seek out the coach who left them, the one now leading a better team at another school. They expect loyalty. Maybe even a second chance.

What they find is contempt. The old coach calls them weak, says he left because staying would have ruined his record. He feels nothing but relief. That’s when it lands. The boys who laughed at the new coach now stand speechless. Their bravado collapses. Their pride hangs limp, like a wet uniform stretched across a fence. The Winning Try begins, not with a miracle, but with humiliation and with the first quiet step toward something more.

Power games and discarded boys

While the rugby team collapses on the field, the real match plays out behind closed doors. Coaches from other athletic departments gather like vultures, already debating how to divide the rugby club’s budget once it’s disbanded. They talk of reallocating funds, strengthening more “promising” teams, securing their own positions. One of them eyes the director’s seat. They speak of strategy and efficiency, but none of it involves the boys themselves.

Amid that quiet cannibalism, Joo Ga-ram walks alone. The students he was meant to train have gone off track and caused trouble. Discipline follows. Punishments fall. Still, he goes to find them. No speeches. No lectures. Just presence. In a story like The Winning Try, that kind of gesture carries weight.

He picks them up, dirt and all, and brings them back. Maybe that’s when something shifts. The boys begin to notice who stayed, who showed up, who carried the weight when no one else did.

Six months from retirement and already under fire

Kang Jeong-hyo has six months left before retirement. She could play it safe. She could let the rugby team vanish quietly, protect her name, and hand the school over with clean numbers and no scandals. Instead, she brings in Joo Ga-ram. For that, she becomes a target.

Mr. Na, the education superintendent, makes his move early. He questions her decision, her judgment, her legacy. He calls the new coach a disgrace, a stain, the shame of Korean athletics. He demands his removal, reminding her of her time left and the reputation she’ll carry out the door.

She stays still. She listens, measured and composed. In The Winning Try, that choice matters. She refuses to give up the only person who still believes the team can be more than an embarrassment. While others posture, she places her trust in the man everyone else calls a mistake.

The real game happens off the field

Every corridor of authority in The Winning Try is rigged. Schedules are manipulated. Resources are distributed according to favoritism. Gym space is negotiated like a corporate asset, with the rugby team always last on the list. The vice principal bows to influence. Mr. Na pulls strings from above. The shooting team gets priority not through merit, but because his daughter wants it, and he has the power to make it happen.

In the middle of that quiet corruption, Joo Ga-ram becomes the problem no one knows how to contain. He mocks the chain of command with the kind of humor that draws blood. He makes it clear he sees through the posturing. But he doesn't stop at words. While others shuffle responsibilities and pass down orders, he gets up. He moves. He shows up for a team everyone else has already erased from the plan.

The Winning Try dedicates most of its pilot not to training montages or underdog triumphs, but to humiliation. The institutional kind that doesn't come with a referee. The episode builds power structures only to expose how hollow they are. And when Joo Ga-ram rises, it isn’t for glory. It’s because no one else will.

The Winning Try: Ten shots to the head

The Winning Try ends its first episode not with unity, but with impact. The rugby team is humiliated once again, excluded from the school’s ceremonial rites and forced into clean-up duty. The players are invisible. Disposable. And yet, they stand there, made to watch as traditions unfold without them. A whole structure of status and legacy staged like theater, with no place for failure.

Then Ga-ram throws the ball.

Not in protest. Not in anger. With aim. With force. The rugby ball slams into the head of the ceremonial pig, knocking it sideways in front of everyone. He doesn't speak. He doesn't wait. It’s a single gesture that says everything about how he plans to move. Ten clean hits. He finishes what he started. In a world that doesn't want him, led by a system that resents him, he delivers a message loud enough to split bone.

For viewers familiar with sports anime, The Winning Try hits familiar nerves. It channels the emotional weight and intensity of titles like Slam Dunk and Kuroko no Basket, not just in theme, but in texture. The series blends live action with moments of stylized animation inserts that echo manga panels, using freeze-frames, impact lines, and emphasis close-ups to heighten key moments with a visual punch straight out of a graphic novel.

The result? The winning Try is a drama that pulses with the same kind of fire, shame, and reckless drive that fuels the best sports anime. For fans of those genres, this is an unexpected but welcome translation of that energy into the world of Korean high school rugby.

The Winning Try isn’t about underdog magic or sudden transformation. It begins with hostility and holds onto it. But in the moment the ball strikes, the terms are set. This man will lead. This team will fall, rise, and be broken again. But from here, we follow.

Rating with a touch of flair: Five out of five headshots.

Stage super well set. And what was really behind the drug scandal? We'll surely get there. One winning try at a time.