Silence the razzmatazz, best tunes are on field
When the new All Black captain Sam Cane and his fellow Chiefs reached halftime during last week’s painful Super Rugby Aotearoa defeat by the Hurricanes in Hamilton, they were serenaded down the tunnel by a blast of
Don’t Stop Me Now, a song recorded, to the best of your columnist’s limited knowledge of glam rock, by Queen.
The choice of tune seemed just a little odd, for there had been precious little evidence in the first 40 minutes that Cane and company had actually started. Freddie Mercury’s lyrics were almost as irrelevant to the 20-3 deficit as his range of sequin-studded jockstraps, although the home side could certainly have used some of his energy.
All of which begged an important question about rugby’s love affair with “event packaging”– not just the prematch and post-match brands, but also the during-match variety. Namely: What is it for? Or to put the same query in a different way: Why bother?
Leaving aside Gloucester and Northampton, two well-supported clubs with a deep-grained suspicion of “entertainment add-ons”, it is difficult to think of a Premiership venue where the crowd is considered capable of lasting longer than 30 seconds without some form of non-rugby sensory sustenance.
Even in quietly prosperous Bath, where a Liberal Democrat fondue party is viewed as dangerously radical, the resident genius in the marketing department decided that the Recreation Ground atmosphere needed zapping up. Long gone are the polite, precisely articulated tones of Alastair Steel, an affable soul whose years on public address duty were notable for two things: the clarity of his team information and the complete absence of spluttering “come on you Bath” inanities.
Down the road in Bristol, there have been all manner of nonsenses over the years.
When Richard Hill was head coach, some bright spark persuaded him that he should name a “man of the match” from his own team before the final whistle, irrespective of how uselessly his charges were performing.
This was acutely embarrassing. No matter how thorough the towelling Bristol might have received in front of their home supporters, the most insanely competitive of England scrum-halves found himself publicly identifying the driest member of the shower he had put on the field when all he really wanted to do was drag the lot of them into the dressing room and reach for an industrial-sized hairdryer.
Then there was the glorious Memorial Ground moment in 2002 when a professional hollerer with a roving microphone was heard to scream: “And don’t forget to book your tickets for our first ever Heineken Cup home game, against the French giants Monty Ferrano.”
He then doubled down on his mangling of the word “Montferrand” by performing an uncannily accurate impersonation of Basil Fawlty tripping over the garden gnome and almost falling flat on his face. You can’t put a price on talent like that.
Needless to say, the market leaders in match-day marketing have been Saracens,
who are often too clever for words and occasionally too clever by half, as recent events have demonstrated.
If the late Peter Deakin was the trailblazer in this area, Edward Griffiths was no slouch in building on his legacy.
Between them, they pulled more stunts – the five-minute “pizza madness”; victory celebration music with the contest still in progress – and annoyed more opponents than anyone in the sport, with the possible exception of Austin Healey.
International rugby has been slow to catch up, but it’s getting there. The Male Voice Choir and the regimental goat are still fundamental to Test buildups in Cardiff, but the decibel levels have gone through the Principality Staapproach dium roof – the very roof that was once closed BEFORE a Red Arrows fly-past ahead of a big game. Yes, really.
For its part, Twickenham revels ever more volubly in the Rule Britannia spirit, with monarchy and military invariably in the thick of things.
It too has suffered the odd pratfall, not least when the Rugby Football Union hired a dog display team from the home counties to do its thing on the field in the name of wholesome family fun.
Unfortunately, one of the dogs did its thing smack on the 22-metre line, the deposit remaining in place a little too long for comfort as far as the players were concerned.
The moral of this tale of woe? All teams should take the Gloucester
by letting the rugby, and the crowd, do the talking. If you take your sport strong and additive-free, there is no place like Kingsholm.
Back in the day, seconds after Wasps had beaten the Cherry and Whites in a bitterly contested league game, Eileen Dallaglio, mother of the visiting captain Lawence, could be seen on the touchline engaging in a furious row with a local supporter – an argument she appeared to win hands down.
“This bloke ran across the field from the Shed at the final whistle and told her she should be back home, doing the ironing,”
Lawrence later reported, howling with laughter. “I could have told him it was a really bad idea, saying that to my mum. But he didn’t ask me.”
“All teams should take the Gloucester approach by letting the rugby do the talking”