Football needs to look after its own, like everyone else
As Covid-19 shuts down sporting leagues and competitions around the world, some Premiership clubs are leading the way in how it looks after their fans. By Henry Winter.
ATIENCE’’ is one of the words staring out at the viewer from the walls of the Australia dressing room and you don’t need much of it to get to the rationale for Amazon’s new eight-part series on the country’s cricket team. About 20 minutes into the first episode, in fact, for Justin Langer, the head coach, to spell it out: ‘‘There’s abuse and there’s banter. No more abuse. Plenty of talk, plenty of banter, but no more abuse’’.
For the benefit of the rest of the world, the famous Australian line has been redrawn, just like that, and The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team, co-produced by Cricket Australia (CA) and a local production company, is a helpful vehicle for the recalibration. Time and again, the message is hammered home: banter good; abuse no good; good citizens as well as good cricketers. Even the famous ‘‘elite honesty, elite learning, elite mate-ship, elite humility and elite professionalism’’ gets an airing in a team values meeting.
Australia are not the only team keen on developing ‘‘elite’’ culture – England captains Joe Root and Eoin Morgan have spent considerable time on the same – but no team were in need of such a radical rebranding after the sandpaper cheating events of Cape Town two years ago that resulted in 12-month bans handed down to three players and a string of coaches and administrators losing their jobs.
Think of this documentary as one part of the crisismanagement that followed.
Armed with a new captain, Tim Paine, and a new coach, Langer, CA sought out Amazon – which has already dipped a toe into the live sports rights market and has plenty of cash to throw at a lavish documentary series such as this – for the distribution. And lavish it is: with unprecedented access, the cameras are installed in every dressing room and every team meeting, recording an epic journey, culminating in the retention of the Ashes in England last September.
More than 2300 hours of footage were filmed, alongside archive clippings of the cricket played, and director Adrian Brown has done a terrific job of marshalling the resources at his disposal. The narrative is clear and compelling, the material unprecedented – no other international team have given up as much of themselves as this – and the interviews never less than interesting. It is a revealing portrait of a team determined to better themselves.
Access is a blessing and a curse in this instance. A blessing because every film-maker wants ‘‘in’’. Who does not want to see Langer, in the away dressing room at Headingley, kicking a blue dustbin in frustration the moment Nathan Lyon fluffs the ball, missing a crucial run-out, and then watch him spend the next minute picking up the rubbish that had fallen out of it, for fear of his players returning that instant to a pig sty? It was a poignant moment, tinged with high comedy.
Who does not want to see Lyon break down in tears as he presents his mate Marcus Harris with a Baggy Green cap, or Aaron Finch, sipping a beer in the depressing half-light of his home, fretting about his disastrous one-day form? Or the haunted look on the faces of the players immediately after Ben Stokes has beaten them at Headingley, the Ashes at that moment slipping away? Or the joy, a week later in the dressing room at Manchester, as they reenact the moment the urn is retained? Authenticity shines through all these glimpses and more.
But access is also a curse because we know the deal. The