The Winning Try episode 10 review — Politics, despair, and fragile hope

Scene from The Winning Try | Image via: Netflix
Scene from The Winning Try | Image via: Netflix

The Winning Try episode 10 tightens the grip around every character. With only two episodes left, the series dismantles any illusion of safety, exposing how young players are caught in the crossfire of adult cruelty.

Seong-jun’s shoulder injury, already devastating, becomes a tool in someone else’s hands. His mother’s demand that he abandon rugby to serve as the agent of his football-star twin is grotesque, transforming love into a transaction and family into a contract. It is one of the most painful reminders in the series that betrayal does not always come from rivals. Sometimes it comes from those closest, and that is what makes it unbearable.

The atmosphere of this episode is thick with that cruelty. Every frame reminds us that in The Winning Try, the purity of the sport collides with the ugliness of the adult world, where ambition and envy rot what should have been simple joy. Victories are fragile, and every moment of laughter feels borrowed, as if it could be stolen at any time.

Ga-ram in The Winning Try | Image via: Netflix
Ga-ram in The Winning Try | Image via: Netflix

The fragile brilliance of Ga-ram

Ga-ram holds the emotional center of The Winning Try in this chapter. His choice is not a boisterous act of rebellion but a subtle capitulation that turns radiant. He moves ahead, not for his own sake, but for Seong-jun and the group, shouldering a burden that was never his to carry. This moment brings no glory, nor is there any triumph to be celebrated.

Rather, it's the kind of love that requires total devotion without a word. His action turns the moment into something beyond mere drama. It transforms into a depiction of commitment, of selflessness that doesn’t aim for acknowledgment, of fidelity that pains as it heals.

Through Ga-ram, The Winning Try reminds us that the essence of the game is not in trophies or applause but in the ties between the team, and in the trust that binds them together. His fragile brilliance glows against the darkness, and because it costs him so much, it leaves the audience breathless.

I-ji and U-jin against a hostile system

I-ji, the shooting coach, has grown into one of the most important presences in The Winning Try. She embodies strength and compassion, providing support where the institution lacks. The grotesque misogyny she endures is compounded by the silence of those around her. Rather than being acknowledged, she is consistently diminished, compelled to validate her value repeatedly.

Next to her, U-jin represents the battle to endure in a setting intended to wipe her out. She is more than an athlete; she is a young woman battling bias, disregard, and demands that weigh down rather than uplift. Watching them continue is both painful and inspiring, because their endurance is itself resistance.

Together, I-ji and U-jin show what The Winning Try insists on telling us: that even when the system conspires to destroy, resilience can bloom, compassion can be rebellion, and simply surviving can be the loudest act of defiance.

Despair and hope entwined in The Winning Try final episodes

The adults around the team become a gallery of corruption and envy. The reporter lurks with his camera, waiting to tear down lives. The vice president of the school uses Ga-ram’s condition as a political tool. Parents twist their children’s futures into bargaining chips.

The Winning Try episode 10 makes clear that the real battle is not on the pitch but in the world outside it, where power and frustration corrode everything they touch.

And yet, amid all this despair, the boys (and girls) still hold onto each other. They laugh, they share moments of lightness, they cling to fragments of solidarity that shimmer even in the darkest hours. Those moments of tenderness cut deeper than the cruelty, because they show how beauty survives where it should not.

Scene from The Winning Try | Image via: Netflix
Scene from The Winning Try | Image via: Netflix

The preview points to hospitals, desperate measures, and the possibility of collapse. It leaves us with dread that is difficult to shake, but also with the fragile hope that love, loyalty, and resilience might still prevail.

The Winning Try carries us into the final stretch with both fear and longing, demanding that we face the uncertainty head on.

Rating with a touch of flair: 5 out of 5 fragile hopes clutched against despair.

Edited by Beatrix Kondo