View from the sofa: England are Sky high, Wales get poetry in motivation

Autumn internationals Sky Sports 2, BBC 1

If England win the rugby union World Cup next year, Sky Sports may have to take some credit. Because it seems there is little more motivating against one of the best teams in the world than having a couple of World Cup winners on the touchline armed with a whopping great television screen ready to scrutinise your every move.

That is what Sky Sports did on Saturday for England’s final autumn international of the year, against Australia. England’s umpteenth centre pairing since their World Cup win in 2003 had Will Greenwood glaring at them from across the whitewash, while George Ford, chucked into the fray at fly-half, could feel the icy stare of the bloke who actually kicked the winning points in the final 11 years ago, Jonny Wilkinson.

So bravo, Sky Sports, it worked a treat. Perhaps ITV can persuade Geoff Hurst and Gordon Banks to stalk the touchline with a similarly golf-cart-mounted, supersized TV when the England football team are next in a slump.

Of course, the win over the Wallabies wasn’t as simple as making the team brick it at the prospect of having Greenwood and Wilkinson go “nyah nyah nyah” and show off their Webb Ellis Trophy back tattoos (they surely have them) if they lost against the Wallabies. Rugby is not that simple.

In fact, it is pretty far from that simple. Believe me, I come from New Zealand which, apart from boasting the best team in the world, has more amateur experts per head of population than anywhere on the planet. I have lost count of the number of times I have been bamboozled by conversations about cut-out passes and second-phase ball over morning break in the kiwi fruit packing shed. Then there was that dinnertime conversation with an ex-girlfriend’s parents about what the best All Black first XV should have been for every pool game of the 1987 World Cup. That was memorable, if only for the fact I was ridiculed for overlooking Terry Wright.

So it is once again kudos to Sky for making the sport accessible to a greater demographic than the stereotypical green-wellied Range Rover driver. Whatever misgivings the viewer had about a touchline telly (which in football frequently serves to complicate matters) were soon dispelled as Greenwood and Wilkinson kept things straightforward.

Take the post-match interview with England’s man of the match, Ben Morgan, in front of the analysis screen. The ex-player could have delved into all manner of baffling breakdown chat when dissecting the first of the No 8’s two tries, but he kept it simple. “It was a great set-piece move and you got it over,” Greenwood said as the try replayed on screen, before letting Morgan have the floor.

Over on BBC, where Wales were playing South Africa, Auntie went for a very different brand of motivation. It began with a piece of pompous quasi-poetry, for a start.

Eddie Butler was the orator doing his best to render matters more important than 30 men jumping on each other and occasionally chucking an oval ball about, with a verse based on the principality’s inability to close out a win over the southern hemisphere’s two other bigwigs this autumn.

Here’s a sample: “The swing of a pendulum, the tick-tock of a game finely balanced. Your turn. Tick-tock. Our turn. Then the torture begins. It’s All Black time. The masters of time. And Wales – you’re out of time.”

Note to Butler: it’s a sporting event, not a poetry slam. There is absolutely no need for pregnant pauses in between repetitive, clumsy metaphors to introduce a game of rugby. Heck, it didn’t even rhyme properly.

After Butler’s poem, we had 20-odd minutes of analysis – which the Wales coach, Warren Gatland, may well have piped into the dressing room. The abiding message was as flaky as South Africa have been this autumn: Wales don’t have a prayer.

There were a few incomprehensible videos of the Springboks’ lineouts-cum-mauls (seriously, nobody needs to know what goes on in a maul – and with good reason) accompanied by Keith Wood in the studio saying something technical. Thankfully, the crowd were singing something pleasant in the background.

Then, as if to properly thumb their noses at the current Wales team, they replayed the highlights of the opening match at the Millennium Stadium, 15 years ago – when the Welshmen beat South Africa for the first time in history. As if Gatland’s men needed any more incentive.

In the end, the fact Wales won meant the Beeb had little choice but to join Sky in getting behind their respective teams, albeit with a few caveats – such as the commentator Jonathan Davies saying straight after the final whistle that “there is still lots to be done” and Sonja McLaughlan’s post-match question to Dan Biggar about whether they had any doubts in those final, tense 10 minutes. The player answered candidly: “Many times.”

Still, just like Sky’s, the BBC’s peculiar brand of motivation had worked a treat. Now to repeat it next year.