Wild about sport:
Crowd Goes
Wild presenter Andrew Mulligan talks about his sporting life.
Anyone who read my write-ups of Taumarunui club rugby decades ago knows I am no sports reporter.
Forty years on, my sports knowledge – and interest – is still pretty much restricted to headline events like the Olympic Games or anything where a Kiwi beats out the rest of the world.
For me, the nightly sports news between the real news and the weather is a great time to start dinner, so you can imagine how surprising it was to find myself watching YouTube clips from The Crowd Goes Wild the other morning for way longer than research justified.
It turns out what the show’s host Andrew Mulligan calls ‘sport-tainment’ is much more fun than I ever imagined.
While I’m slow on the uptake, others aren’t and The Crowd Goes Wild has built up a solid following in its 11 years on air, and now the team – Mulligan, Wairangi Koopu, Huw Benyon, Makere Gibbons James McOnie, Chris Key, Josh Kronfeld (above) and Hayley Holt – is back for the 12th season.
“We are very fortunate to have survived this long,” says Mulligan.
“We’ve seen a lot of cultural shifts in viewing habits and the way information is digested.
“When we first started, 7pm was a good time to have a sport show because people could come home and find out what happened. Nowadays, everybody’s multi-screening. They know exactly what’s happened before the news is delivered.
“To be able to do it in an entertaining way, I think, is our greatest point of difference.”
Different, indeed. Mulligan – tongue in cheek, I think – describes rubbing body lotion into then co-host Mark Richardson’s legs on screen, as a career highlight.
The Crowd Goes Wild team has no qualms about embroiling New Zealand’s sports stars in their antics.
When Chiefs player Stephen Donald scored a contract to play rugby for Bath in England, he was
interviewed while up to his neck in soapsuds in a bath.
Mulligan admits that, in the show’s early days, it wasn’t always easy to find sportspeople prepared to go along with their ideas.
“They weren’t interested in that kind of stuff for years and then I think we wore them down,” he says, adding most were worried they would come off looking bad.
“I think that was their biggest fear. We don’t get it right all the time but we generally try to. We don’t try to upset sports bodies. New Zealand is a very closed sports community and word gets around.
“When things go wrong you just laugh and move on. It’s only TV and it’s only TV in New Zealand. It’s not that big a deal.”
Occasionally, it is the viewers who react negatively.
“There’s always people who listen to the tone of the show and, while not necessarily offended, may have a differing viewpoint.
“I don’t tend to listen to or worry about that kind of stuff. We’re not a hard-hitting, opinionated show.
“We’re there to have fun. If you take it the wrong way then I think that’s more a reflection on you than on the show.”
While the show might border on the irreverent at times, there’s no doubt Mulligan and his team not only know their sports but are also huge fans.
“My dad was in sports radio when I was growing up and that’s how I got the bug for sports broadcasting,” he says.
“Anything and everything that is sport I’ll have a crack at, except golf. It’s not really a sport in my eyes but anything else, yeah, I’m fair game.”
This year he’s looking forward to the Football World Cup, the NBA season and watching the Black Caps against Australia and England.
“But you never know what is going to happen in the world of sport. It could be anything. There’s those things you look forward to but in actual fact it could be something else that grabs your attention,” Mulligan says.
“I work in breakfast radio as well, on the Rock, so I’m on the web as such from 4.45am until I go to bed at about 9pm. I’m always on my phone, always on my computer or iPad or whatever looking at what’s been happening because everything changes in the blink of an eye.”
What doesn’t change is The Crowd Goes Wild. Its format is largely unchanged from when the show launched in 2006.
“It’s a formula that works and, touch wood, this could easily end up being our last year,” says Mulligan, “but hopefully long may it continue.”
“We’re there to have fun. If you take it the wrong way then I think that’s more a reflection on you than on the show.” – Andrew Mulligan