I love sport, but this weekend, some of the action I felt compelled to watch was pretty horrendous. England against Scotland in the rugby, the Bahrain Grand Prix... a total of four hours spent watching the kettle that certainly didn’t boil. But, as an English sports fan, I HAD to be there. Of course I did. As Jake Humphrey put it:
“Oh, what a Formula 1 season we’re going to have! Fernando Alsonso in a Ferrari, Michael Schumacher is coming back, the Lotus name is in Formula 1 once again... but it’s two British drivers in a British team that everybody’s talking about”.
He forgot to mention that Formula 1 is pretty boring these days. And a few ‘personalities’ and any old car painted in British Racing Green weren’t going to make it any different. Auntie did pay £150 million out of the license-payers’ pocket, so of course I wasn’t drawn in by the media hype and I purely watched to get the most out of my money.
It was still boring. But more viewers are still watching, and media corporations are paying through their teeth for the rights to the sport. I’ll have some of what Ecclestone has for breakfast, please.
And the England rugby. At half time, John Inverdale put on a brave face: “We may not have had a try, but the atmosphere is tremendous... but... this... this is one of those games that proves that you don’t have to have tries to have a really interesting game of rugby, and this is what we have.” Even the most experienced of broadcasters was struggling to keep us interested, probably himself drifting away to June and orange juice on the Wimbledon balcony with Boris Becker.
The commentator Andrew Cotter didn’t even try... “So... Not a great spectacle.”
I’m sure most of the action in the rugby Championship would beat the match at Murrayfield hands down in terms of quality, spectacle and drama, and a local go-karting track would have been better than Bahrain. But I’ve been convinced that these events have such importance, that the personalities are legends, that the backstory is so compelling that I won’t miss it.
I could, and maybe should go to my local rugby club next Saturday, but I’ll still be in front of the TV at 7.45 to watch England trundle around the pitch again. And I know come 14th November I’ll be tuned into the BBC to see if the personalities have managed to keep awake for the whole season and produce a tight finish. You don't even need to persuade me, Jake and John.
No comments:
Post a Comment