By EWAN MCDONALD
Watched any good footy games on TV lately? No, I mean really good footy games. Ones that will stand out in your memory like the All Blacks edging the Springboks in the 1981 "flour-bomb test" at Eden Park. Sunderland toppling Leeds in the FA Cup final in 1973. The Kiwis walloping the Kangaroos, any time.
No, not the one a few weeks ago where the final whistle had hardly been blown at Stadium Australia before a breathless commentator was putting words into Nick Farr-Jones' mouth: "Wouldn't you say that was one of the greatest games, the greatest game, you've ever seen?" "Well, er, ah, um, yeaaa ..." "Wallaby great Nick Farr-Jones says that was the greatest ..." Until the next game at the Wellington Cake Tin and the game after that at Ellis Park.
Rugby, and every other professional sport, has become entertainment, and that industry requires that each new week's product is bigger than last week's. Believe me, they are working on Titanic II.
Commentators, even those former All Blacks and Wallabies who are hired to give the entertainment some credibility, are bound up in the industry. Few buck the trend because if they're not excited enough they're simply not asked back the following week.
Or, heaven help them, if they are too expert. Cricket-watchers recall with amusement when the Great Kiwi Fast Bowler was invited to comment on one of those Australian "World Series" which, strangely, the locals invariably win.
During one match at the MCG the GKFB mused about yet another decision which went in favour of the home team. His open-minded colleague, Bill Lawry, asserted that it was a perfectly good call. The GKFB wondered aloud about Lawry's own record of being given out lbw by Australian umpires. End of a budding commentating career.
This reluctance to tell the truth because it might upset the advertisers and turn off the viewers is not limited to Australia and New Zealand. Ken Jones, an English sporting journalist, points out that at soccer's Euro 2000 championships, ridiculous expectations were held out for Kevin Keegan's team, largely because professional players and coaches employed by television flinched from telling the truth about the state of the game.
"One of the most distinctive and widely applauded acts available on American television is the trenchant boxing punditry of Teddy Atlas," wrote Jones. "Recently, when witness to the unconvincing efforts of two welterweights, Atlas said: 'Hopeless. They should both quit before they get hurt.'
"It is not known how long Atlas will be able to go on like this, how much of the unvarnished truth American boxing will take, but he is striking a blow for fearless objectivity.
"The five-times major winner Johnny Miller has been as splendidly frank since going over to golf commentary. Watching a player on the US Tour consider a shot, Miller pronounced that two choices were available. 'Took the dumb option,' Miller said when the ball found a bunker.
"Going back to 1967, the former Tottenham Hotspur and Northern Ireland captain Danny Blanchflower was hired by the CBS network to comment on matches in the newly formed North American Soccer League. Blanchflower found himself watching a poor standard of football and said so, quickly running foul of advertisers who, understandably, took a dim view of his negative utterances. 'We need you to move the game along,' he was told. 'Speak well of it.'
"One extremely humid day in Atlanta it was suggested he predict a rousing second half. 'Say that by then in this heat, the players' blood will be boiling,' the programme's producer said. On air, Blanchflower declared, 'My producer says the game will come alive after halftime, but by then the players will be on their knees. They won't have anything left.'
"It was the truth and Blanchflower didn't last long. You see: not what they wanted."
Funny thing is, it's only the advertisers and the producers who want this sort of hype. Listen for five minutes to the public calling the sports talkback shows. They know what the score is. They know when they're being conned.
<i>Powerpoint:</i> The commentators art - truth of hyperbole?
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