Access-all-areas intrusion may hit competing nations for Six
THE upcoming Six Nations was officially launched last week at London’s County Hall with all the captains and head coaches of the competing nations in attendance.
For long-serving skippers like Owen Farrell and Johnny Sexton it was a familiar ritual which mentally fired the starting gun on the championship, but this year one thing was different.
The presence of an awful lot of Netflix cameras.
This season the Six Nations has hopped on board sport’s most fashionable train, a must-have accessory for any self-respecting professional organisation.
The teams’ every move will be tracked in intricate detail so the very smell of the dressing room sweat will be filtered into your living rooms by the resulting docu-series.that’s the idea anyway. It will be shown next year.
A sport which has been stuck in its ways promotionally is attempting to attract a new range of predominantly younger followers in the same way Formula One has with Drive To Survive.
The success of that Netflix production, especially in the USA, has been huge, bringing fans closer to the drivers and teams.
Series five will be screening next month, just after the golf version – Full
Swing
– goes out.
This year has already seen the tennis equivalent – Break Point – hit the streaming platform.
You can’t move for behind-thescenes footage these days.there seems to be as much as there is front-of-house footage.
The attraction for viewers is obvious. Most of us are naturally curious so a peek behind the curtains of a sport and a deeper introduction to its characters is appealing.
And the attraction for the sport, beyond the up front cheque, is the added eyeballs.
It’s a win-win.
Or is it?what about the participants? The sportsmen who are the stars of the show?
At the launch I askedwales coach Warren Gatland. His answer was interesting but unlikely to make the final Netflix cut.
Gatland’s take – and he has worked with in-house camera crews before withwales and Lions camps – is that the Netflix deal represents problematic territory for the Six Nations.
His understanding is that the teams have no editorial approval. Without that safety net his fear is of coaches and players being caught out spouting incendiary words in a dressing room that they definitely wouldn’t in public.
“I can tell you now that in a rugby environment when you are talking about creating emotion the language and the phrases used aren’t always appropriate,” said Gatland (below).
The national rivalries involved in a tournament like the Six Nations play right into this.
WALES v England comes in round three this year.ahead of that fixture in 1977, the sadly departed Phil Bennett delivered a pre-match call to arms at the National Stadium along the lines of the following…
“Look at what these b ****** s have done to Wales. They’ve taken our coal, our water, our steel.
“They buy our houses and live in them for a fortnight every 12 months. And what have they given us? Absolutely nothing.
“We’ve been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English – and we’re playing them this afternoon.”
Stirring stuff. But imagine for a second if the cameras had been rolling.
Might thewales captain have felt the need to moderate his address for a TV audience?
If Gatland, as the most experienced coach in the tournament, is thinking of the dangers then all six of them should be.and the players too.
The Netflix-ification – and the Amazon Prime-ification – has in general been a good thing so far. It does give an interesting insight into things.
Whether it is the dressing room rants at Manchester City from Pep Guardiola that need sub-titles or Jose Mourinho’s frustrations with Dele Alli at Spurs, being taken inside the tent is instructive for those watching on the sofa.
The insight Amazon’s All Or Nothing series at Arsenal gave fans may even have saved Mikel Arteta’s job, as it showed doubting fans in his stumbling early days his passion.
As the trail-blazing Living With Lions documentary in 1997 showed, rugby – with its characters and camaraderie – should be a good fit for this sort of production.
The Six Nations has high hopes its alliance with Netflix can help to grow the game.
But if access-all-areas for an outside agency ends up inhibiting those under the spotlight, then it is simply not worth it in the long
run.