Desperate to escape the ‘B’ word on the media, I have found myself dipping in and out of the Rugby Union World Cup. Not every match, you understand. Games involving rugger hot beds like Uruguay, Russia, Georgia, Canada and the USA hold no interest for me, except when England are playing, so it was with that in mind that I tuned in this morning.
The first bit of bad news is that ITV has the broadcasting rights. At least we can be grateful that it’s on terrestrial telly and not Sky but this is little consolation when you actually watch the programmes.
The presenters are largely bland and inoffensive enough but the pundits: bloody hell. England’s tussle with the USA gave us three clearly neutral pundits in former England coach ‘Sir’ Clive Woodward, Jonny Wilkinson and Lawrence ‘Lol’ Dallaglio. You’d have thought that England weren’t playing anyone at all and given the USA’s pub team quality, perhaps they had a point. Above all it was dull, dull, dull. So was the game.
The experts have a part of the studio where the pundits explain the technicalities of the game in a kind of technical area. I could not quite follow what Jonny was trying to show us but he did so holding a rugby ball and bumping into two men dressed in rugby kits. It could not have been more embarrassing. Jonny is a nice man and a national hero but he has the kind of voice to send you to sleep.
The tournament itself is typical world cup of any sport. Overblown and overlong, featuring a large number of teams who do not have a chance of winning a game, never mind winning the thing. So far, England have played Tonga and the USA. Surprise, surprise; they won both games handsomely. Prior to that I was pleased to avoid a game between Italy, the worst team in the six nations by light years, and Canada. Italy won easily, which tells you the standard of rugby on display. And then there were the adverts.
Ads are carefully tailored to the viewing audience so I found almost immediately they were not aimed for me as two bearded blokes, one on a piano and on on guitar, belted out a Chas and Dave version of Together in Electric Dreams. The version itself wasn’t actually that bad but it was an advert for Strongbow cider. No self-respecting human being drinks Strongbow. What has come over rugby union fans? I always had them down as avid consumers of fine ale, not bat’s piss. Then there were ads for cars – always a good combination with alcohol – and of course ‘Get ready for Brexit’ which appeared immediately after Mark Pougatch said, “And we’ll be back after the break with more padding.” No, actually that’s what he should have said.
I will watch more of it if I am around because it’s something to do on these grim early winter mornings. Hopefully, England will play someone decent before long (I am not interested enough in looking up who is playing who and when) before their inevitable defeat somewhere along the way by New Zealand.
I certainly hope it occurs soon to ITV that there are other countries in the UK than England. I appreciate that fact that Scotland are unlikely to progress very far but for all that you might expect them to enjoy a little amount of coverage on the telly. I mean, it’s fun seeing a video of the England ‘guys’ (rugby union players are all ‘guys’, just like rugby union teams are always in ‘pools’ and not ‘groups’) arsing about in the team hotel but a little analysis of someone else, maybe just once in the show, might not go amiss.
But for now, it’s Lol and Jonny with Sir Clive, offering us little snippets of trivia and little else. It’s at times like this I miss Brian Moore who actually offers genuine analysis, but this is 2019 and I guess your average viewer just wants fluff. She or he is in the right place on ITV. Fluff is what they do.
