Irish box clever in rugby fame game
EIreland’s celebrity pool is shallower, but where are English rugby players in the mass media?
ngland and Ireland were both involved in high-profile autumn internationals against southern-hemisphere superpowers at the weekend, but only one of those countries seemed to really know it.
In Ireland, the meeting with New Zealand was the talk of every shop, pub and hairdresser the length and breadth of the country – or at least that is how it seemed to this correspondent. In England, however, beyond Eddie Jones causing a few ripples with his comments around Emma Raducanu’s overexposure, nothing about the clash with Australia entered the national conversation.
The reality is that rugby remains a niche sport in England, outside of swathes of the South West, East Midlands and leafy parts of the Home Counties. The same used to be true in Ireland, where the sport lagged behind Gaelic football, hurling and soccer in popularity, outside of Munster at least. It was, as my grandmother so eloquently put it, “only for swanks”.
Well not now. Irish rugby has its issues, not least in the women’s game, where the remarks of performance director Anthony Eddy last week – effectively blaming the players for failing to qualify for the World Cup, rather than the myriad organisational deficiencies – prompted widespread outrage.
But beyond that, rugby is now coming perilously close to being Ireland’s national game – and it is not simply down to the men’s team enjoying a relatively golden period of success (although that helps).
More relevant is how Ireland have marketed and democratised the sport in a way England have not. Most obviously, all of Ireland’s Test matches and provincial matches, excluding the Champions Cup, are on terrestrial television, the importance of which cannot be overstated.
English rugby has long since opted to shut most of its best “content” behind subscription television services, but free-to-air is the way to unlock the sport, a point made by Lewis Ludlam and Detysha Harper – both players of mixed heritage and from “nontraditional backgrounds” – in an interview with Telegraph Sport.
Raducanu endeared herself to the British public first because she made her Wimbledon debut live on the BBC, and for all the comparisons made by Jones, it is inconceivable that Marcus Smith will get anywhere near that level of exposure if his wonderful talent is only available on pay TV.
The Irish celebrity pool is shallower than England’s, but where are English rugby players in the mass media?
Maro Itoje is the example generally cited as being best placed to broaden rugby’s appeal, but being the face of Ralph Lauren or popping up on the cover of Tatler is probably only going to appeal to a more traditional rugby audience.
In Ireland, television over the past decade has been flooded with rugby players showing up in other guises. One moment generally seen as instrumental in winning Irish hearts and minds was a programme called Tommy Bowe’s Body Check, which occupied a prime-time RTE slot in 2013. It demystified rugby’s physicality, and people loved it.
So why not commission a copycat programme starring Jonny May, a player with a unique and endearing personality and with a love of the appliance of science to sport, to explain just what it takes to have a body built for Test rugby?
Owen Farrell appearing on Loose Women may be a step too far, but Joe Marler would be an ideal fit to discuss modern masculinity and mental health with Nadia Sawalha, Coleen Nolan and the girls.
There is an open goal for rugby now that James Haskell’s father-inlaw, Richard Madeley, is to co-anchor Good Morning Britain
– crack open the contacts book and get the likes of Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler to share their journeys to a huge breakfast-time audience.
If little old Ireland, which once had rugby tied to class, can make the change, so can England.
The future of the sport depends on it.