The World Cup media circus

Tuesday September 30 2003

The Sunday Times' Stephen Jones has a look at the 'other' media - no, not himself! - as the 2003 Rugby World Cup draws nearer.

Planet Rugby will again be one of the best vantage points from which to follow the Rugby World Cup, but consider the incredible fashion in which coverage of the event has multiplied in all forms of the media over the past 16 years, and become wall-to-wall in serious rugby nations.

The preview in the UK's Sunday Times newspaper for the 1987 Rugby World Cup extended to around 1,000 words and alongside that we ran a short panel with one paragraph on each of the 16 competing teams. The whole thing was buried inside the newspaper. We sent one reporter - me.

This coming Sunday, the paper publishes its World Cup supplement, a vast affair of 64 colour pages, sponsored by O2, the England team sponsor, which will be advertised widely on national television. In fact, there will effectively be four supplements, because you get a different edition depending on whether you live in England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales.

The paper is sending five reporters, most of who have been known to attract the attention of the judges for the end-of-year journalism awards - and the judges were bent when we didn't win - plus our chief sports writer. And also writing for us during the event will be Lawrence Dallaglio, Jeremy Guscott, Bob Dwyer, Malcolm O'Kelly, Chris Paterson and Gareth Davies.

This is not just little old me putting forward a marketing tool for my own paper (ahem, Ed), it just shows how stupendous the event has become in the eyes of newspapers, radio, television, magazines and now websites.

Naturally, if you are not one of the lucky people who will be in Australia taking it all in at first-hand then you will be anxiously waiting to assess your own country's television coverage.

In Britain, the tournament will be in the hands and microphones of ITV, a company who try to convince us that they are the rugby station even though they cover no rugby of any note in the four years between tournaments.

World Cup observers are fascinated when they recall the final media conference of the 1999 World Cup, in many ways on and off the field, a bedraggled affair. At this, the then-Chairman of Rugby World Cup, Leo Williams, savaged ITV's performance from every standpoint, proclaiming that RWC were "bitterly disappointed" with ITV.

(Everyone else was "bitterly disappointed" with RWC, come to that, but that is a different story.)

And yet four years on, ITV bounce back large as life, bless them. All forgiven, it seems, and with no published guarantees as to the company's performance this time. You can only hope that their preview programmes, their production, their commentators and summarisers are up to the mark - and you also hope that, above all, their hearts are in it. In this regard, it is not encouraging that their studio presentation will mostly be coming from dear old Blighty, not good old Aussie.

At least their anchor man is a proper professional, the excellent Jim Rosenthal, not so hopeless, bumbling, non-journalistic ex-player - BBC torpedoed their own (dreadful) Rugby Special last season by inflicting a programme on us with no anchor man and it duly collapsed in a heap, every week.

Some of the talking-head studio guests planned by ITV (Carling, Pienaar etc) seem to come form the ranks of the usual suspects, rather than from the ranks of those I'd really like to listen to; but that is a personal view. No doubt some of you will be hanging on every word. Hopefully, there will be some kind of reporting element available too, for the times when controversy looms. That is when the ex-player mob without editorial instincts get caught short.

Commentary for the big games, it seems, will be in the hands of former Lion John Taylor, a veteran of three World Cups for ITV, and Steve Smith, and the more irreverent that Smithy is, the better we will like it.

It is the stark reality, however, that television coverage in each country will largely dictate how the armchair viewers in that country remember the whole tournament.

Who would be your favourites for a dream team commentary unit? I think I would settle for a squad including the superb Keith Quinn, once the top Kiwi caller, on the mike; I wouldn't put Sky TV's Miles Harrison far behind, nor the other New Zealand callers around at present.

As summarisers, I'd be perfectly happy with Chris Handy and Phil Kearns, both outstanding on Australian TV. Kearns seems to be to be a natural. Frankly, if I were watching on South African TV I'd turn the sound off. And remember dear old Don Clarke droning on daily in 1995, on the box in South Africa? Made Murray Mexted sound like Bill McLaren.

Happy viewing, and happy reading, everyone. And happy surfing. No doubt you will stay with us on Planet Rugby, and let us hope that as far as TV coverage is concerned, all our best hopes are fulfilled.

I'll compare notes at my next awards ceremony.