Excuses and Luck

This morning Scriptor Senex posted on odd excuses given by sportsmen after they lost.  I wondered in my comment what happened to the good old 'He was better than I was'?  No don't misunderstand me.  I've been known to make excuses for things that have happened in my life and some of those excuses may have been outlandish.  However when I've been beaten at a game of some sort involving skill my usual response to being asked why I lost is 'He (or perhaps more often, she) was better than I was'.  Now thinking about it I can understand why people don't say that.  One of the responses I get is 'That's just an excuse'.  Er....no.  It's an explanation.  Obviously it's rarely quite as simple as that.  Sometimes there is an element of luck (good or bad) involved.  But as one of the world's former top croquet players said to me 'The better you play the more good luck people think you have.'  Thinking about it I now realise why my luck's been failing me recently.