When rugby does return. . .we’ll soon crave the familiar
IT’S funny just how quickly the mind’s eye adjusts.
As EPCR streamed Ulster’s European Cup victory over Colomiers on Saturday evening, the scenes that saw the province crowned champions immediately, if only briefly, jarred.
It wasn’t just that, in the old Lansdowne Road, fans were able to jump over the hoardings and stream onto the pitch for a famous celebration that now would have health and safety certificates swiftly revoked. But as the jubilant supporters swarmed their newly minted heroes, everybody just looked far too close together.
It took less than a split second to register that you were watching something that occurred more than 21 years before anyone had heard of Covid-19 and yet the flicker of a thought once again brought home just how different the sport will have to look whenever it is deemed safe to resume.
With the game’s close contact physical nature ensuring it will be the last cab off the rank when it comes to emerging out of lockdown, there will at least be an opportunity for the sport’s organisers to heed plenty of lessons from what will go before.
Earlier on Saturday, Germany’s Bundesliga had resumed, signalling a return of top level sport in a country where deaths related to the coronavirus had totalled in the region of 8,000.
There were some well publicised hiccups in the build-up — Augsburg coach Heiko Herrlich had to skip his side’s defeat to Wolfsburg after leaving the his relegation-threatened side’s hotel to pick up some toothpaste during the week — but the level of football was surprisingly high given the lengthy lay-off.
While it’ll still be almost a month before rugby is back on our screens — the early-risers among us will be able to watch New Zealand’s ‘Super Rugby Aotearoa’ series starting on June 13 — here was a reminder that its return is a compromise — the “new normal” looks and sounds decidedly different.
In Borussia Dortmund’s 4-0 win over Schalke, played in front of zero fans, three photographers and 10 journalists, the respective benches were dotted throughout the stand, masked and socially distant.
Stranger still were the acoustics of the affair. One of the loudest stadiums in the world when thronged with 81,000 inside, there was an eerie quality to Westfalenstadion as each pass and tackle brought an unfamiliar thud or thwack.
Indeed, one largely needless VAR check was met with total silence — presumably the result of 22 men simultaneously remembering that they hadn’t missed absolutely everything about the game after all.
Rugby without crowds will sound unavoidably awful — there’s something wince-inducing about the sound of people of that size colliding at that speed — but at least we can expect 100% less Sweet Caroline.
Celebrations are gone as we know them too, the sight of the prolific Erling Braut Haaland dancing by himself like the most enthusiastic of early night club attendees to mark his opener a reminder that every try will now look like Jacob Stockdale’s record-setter in Twickenham during the Grand Slam every one of his team-mate’s failed to realise he’d actually scored.
But while the outward appearance was somewhat bizarre — more so the next day when Union Berlin’s hosting of Bayern Munich in more quaint surroundings really gave the look of a training ground game — socially distant football was in essence still football. Rugby will hope for the same even if golf hinted at a few more teething problems. After raising $5.5m for charity, the Taylormade Driving relief event was ultimately won by Rory Mcilroy and Dustin Johnson when the Holywood man’s drive on 17 ended up some five and a half feet closer to the pin than Matthew Wolff ’s.
The first sight of the Donald Ross-designed Seminole GC promised to add some intrigue, as of course the quality of the fourball, and yet you still sensed that broadcasters were worried there were not to be enough bells and whistles without the buzz usually generated from the other side of the ropes. What other reason could there have been for interludes with Bill Murray and Donald Trump?
While the play early on certainly showed 66 days’ worth of rust, a less distracting approach would have yielded better results. For while the teasing early on between mic’d up players felt somewhat forced, the discussion between some of the world’s best as they weighed up shot options was fascinating when you could hear it over the special guests.
Recent history recalls that we get nothing more insightful than calls for a pass when sticking a microphone in a rugby jersey and it seems a stretch to think we’d get Arlene and Michelle doing 10 minutes each either side of half-time. Still, the lesson from Florida seems to be to remember there is an inherent danger in trying to re-invent the broadcasting wheel.
You can try to embrace the unusual, but in essence, when rugby returns under such strange circumstances it’s the familiar that will be craved.