RUGBY MATTERS
On-field action lacking at times but Amazon put on great show
SO farewell to the Autumn Nations Cup. The on-field action hovered between poor and downright disappointing – punctuated perversely by a handful of the best tries you will ever see which only seemed to mock us – but off the field I thought the Amazon matchday crew were rather good fun. They deserved better.
Former Clermont and Leicester hooker Benjamin Keyser was the star turn, the best new rugby pundit in many years and his emergence, after a few trial outings with BT Sport last season, is timely with France set to be the team to beat for the next two World Cup cycles at least. For a long time now the game has craved a characterful, insightful French pundit with a better command of English than most natives.
Keyser has gone from to 0 to 100mph in the blink of an eye, he is already so good that others will have to raise their game.
Meanwhile the well-established ‘Flats and Shanks’ double act was good value, Rory Lawson and Nolli Waterman spoke nothing but common sense, Scotty Quinnell was all fire and brimstone and it was a joy to have Mark Durden-Smith back as one of the anchors with Gabby Logan.
To be fair Durders never really went away despite his hectic schedule doing other primetime shows but his Prem Rugby highlights packages on ITV and Channel 5 have been, er, well buried a little. He is nothing if not a primetime front of house merchant.
Back in the early days of Sky getting involved with rugby – circa 1997 – DurdenSmith set the benchmark as mine host and I’m not sure he has ever been bettered. He knows his rugby but he also has fun and gently takes the micky out of one and all when they or the situation warrant it. He can lift the gloom on the murkiest of afternoons.
On the commentary side of things another loquacious Scot is now moving among us. Jamie Lyall was perhaps not a familiar name to the more general rugby audience but he is now following in the footsteps of Bill McLaren and Andrew Cotter, who was also in typically dry form.
On the technical, the flycam at the back of the empty stands panning between the 22 and the try line was unexpectedly revealing and offered up a real sense of what was going on in what the game calls the red zone. Hopefully, this can in some way be continued in the Six Nations.
And in passing, the HD quality of the streaming pics from Amazon Prime on my laptop anyway was an absolute bloody marvel – the BT Sport and Sky Sports pictures I have hitherto been dealing with can sometimes deteriorate to early footage from the Apollo moon shots, they are so grainy and murky. I have no idea what Amazon’s secret is but boy did they deliver!
But the rugby? Like the vast majority I was underwhelmed mainly because I assumed the almost “bonus” nature of the tournament would inspire a more carefree approach. Much of the brilliant cricket we have watched over the last five months or so has had the “bonus” element, high octane joyous action plucked from the jaws of Covid with players performing with an unusual freedom and panache. Surely rugby would tap into the same vibe? Alas not.
The complete absence of Japan and the virtual absence of Fiji bar one game robbed the hurriedly organised tournament of large dollops of x-factor and that, to be fair, was just plain unlucky while, is it me, or have we been “blessed” with almost uniformly rubbish weather for this year’s Six Nations and now the Autumn Cup?
All of which is a shame because, whisper it quietly, I rather like the basic idea of an Autumn Cup even if this year it fell at the first hurdle.
I’ve had an absolute gutful of instantly forgettable Autumn Internationals. Without resorting to Google give me the scoreline of three Autumn Internationals in the last ten years? You have got 20 seconds and the clock is counting. Thought not.
A bit more structure would be no bad thing. It would be great to see a T2 nation being given four big matches on the trot every year and, frankly, it would be a delight for any of the home nations to play France more than once per calendar year. They are now the hottest ticket in town, the All Blacks no longer top the bill.
It won’t happen. The Home Unions have trousered the Amazon millions and are already off making their own plans.