PRIMAL SCREEN Get Shirty
The writing is not on the wall for rugby fans but on the back of the player’s shirts. Donal O’donoghue takes a closer look
Last month, in a move to jazz up the game and attract the ‘casual’ supporter (that’s the person who really needs a pint just when Ireland are about to score a try) the Six Nations powers-that-be decided that all players should sport their names on the back of their shirts. It’s hoped that this will make rugby union as popular as association football and not confuse those who think that all Welsh players are called Vodafone. Other plans to make the game more popular allegedly involve changing Ireland’s national anthem to ‘Zombie’, playing all of France’s home games in sunny Marseille and charging nothing for the matches in Twickenham.
In 2023, as mentioned previously in this column, six of the Top 10 TV programmes of the year were rugby matches. Small-screen audiences do not, apparently, need names on shirts to spur them on. And neither do the French players who are reportedly not fans of the names-on-backs idea, which is why their noms can only be seen using a very strong pair of binoculars (and good luck with deciphering Louis Bielle-biarrey). e signage (England, Scotland and Italy had the names last year) has probably more to do with potential of merchandise – ‘anyone for the last of the Chandler-cunningham South shirts in XXXL?’ – than whipping up fever pitch among the supporters, some of whom are in fact zombies feasting on corporate canapés far from the madding crowd (and their seats).
is year’s opening Six Nations game, France v Ireland in Marseille, was how it should be done: a bear-pit for the visiting team (and fans) where the giant images of players ashed up on the screen were all wearing blue (not an Irish shirt to be seen), prompting the partisan crowd to bellow out their joy as the pyrotechnics and the countdown began in a darkened stadium from dix to uns. ere was no mention of Ireland, no opportunity to bellow out a quick chorus or six of ‘ e Fields’. is was not All-ireland Sunday in Croke Park but a brilliantly antagonistic stadium and I wondered if, not only were Ireland going to get pulverised, but would we even make it out there alive. Yet a erwards, in the wake of a walloping, the row of French fans behind us drowned us with well wishes.
Now with the Welsh coming this weekend, will we need to invoke the Caelan Doris clause of giving certain fans “a few more pints” to gee up hometown support? Or will the sight of red shirts be enough to rise the blood of Leinster supporters? Or perhaps we’ll all just get shirty bellowing out those names (C’mon Number Er, Tadhg Beirne!) because they are not just numbers, they are names and it’s only a game.