Snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

The first citation of this well-worn cliché is American from the time of the US-Mexican War (1846-48) when a US regiment was said to have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Since then the expression has been used countless times, mainly in sporting contexts, although its inverted format, 'snatch defeat from the jaws of victory’, seems to be equally popular. The first citation for the inverted format is from the sports page of an Illinois newspaper in 1874, when it wrote with sarcasm that the original Chicago White Stockings had yet again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.