Jerry Collins’ 2006 F-word incident on live TV sparked media interest in post-match interviews.
Since then, swearing by sports stars has become common, with Sarah Hirini being the latest example.
Critics argue this normalisation erodes societal standards and diminishes the value of sports broadcasts.
It probably started – or was first glorified – when Jerry Collins captained the All Blacks in 2006, and swore in his live, post-match television interview.
Collins said the F-word when talking to Sky’s Tony Johnson after the AllBlacks had scraped through a tight encounter in Buenos Aires.
It became a bigger talking point than the sloppy performance that had resulted in the game being as unexpectedly close as it was.
The public reaction was split along almost comically stereotypical lines, with the traditionalists and conservatives exclaiming shock and horror at such an episode, lamenting the decline in standards that had led to such a faux pas.
Liberals and progressives thought it was a hoot: classic Jerry – unpredictable, authentic and a dose of precisely the sort of medicine the game needed to make it more relatable and accessible.
The most interesting reaction was that of the media, who saw that Collins swearing live on TV created interest and engagement.
For newspapers there was a realisation that there was a rich vein of stories to be mined at the periphery of big matches – unintended slips of the tongue in post-match interviews, moments where players have body parts inadvertently exposed, fan stupidity and coaching box meltdowns.
Jerry Collins has had a great on and off field impact for the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport
For broadcasters, the Collins incident seemingly prompted a greater desire within executive circles to have more contact points during live broadcasts – to stick cameras and microphones in more players’ faces as they came off the field, and to ritualise the half-time interview with the coaches for a real-time take on how they are seeing things.
What this has done in the 20 years since Collins seemed to genuinely forget to whom he was talking, is create a normalised world in which sports stars seemingly often swear for effect or impact in live broadcasts, perhaps under the misguided belief that it makes them the relatable characters they are told the sport needs.
Since Collins swore, there has been an endless procession of high-profile players who have done the same, with Black Ferns Sevens captain, Sarah Hirini, being the latest when she “dropped the F-bomb” following her side winning the title in Los Angeles at the weekend.
So much effort expended, and so much hard work endured to win the title, and all of it was reduced to a headline that said she swore and a 10-second video clip to see the moment – minus of course the very thing that was being advertised as it had to be beeped out.
If the Collins incident started something, then perhaps the Hirini incident should mark the end of it.
Players swearing on camera has lost its schtick if it ever had one.
You don’t need to belong to the fundamental Christian right to feel that the glorification and normalisation of expletive use by sports stars is a fast track to societal erosion, and before we know it, seven-year-olds will be able to recognise more swear words than they will proper nouns.
It also – contrary to what they may think – doesn’t do much for the brand value of those athletes made famous for swearing.
It certainly doesn’t do much for the validation of big match rugby as the last truly unpredictable genre of reality TV when the story of 80 minutes, or even two days of action, can be reduced to one poorly chosen word.
But it won’t be f***ing easy to put this f***ing genie back in the f***ing bottle – F-bombs have become a whole industry in themselves.
Rugby, though, needs for at least one of the vested F-bomb industry partners to back away and the most obvious champion of this correction has to be the broadcast industry.
Broadcasters should be encouraged to see that they are not delivering the world-class viewer experience they think they are when they hurriedly send a reporter on to the field after a big game to get the breathless, hurriedly considered thoughts of the winning and losing captains.
The captains are tired and emotional and understandably can’t gather their thoughts into neat, insightful observations that accurately and articulately sum up what has just happened.
Instead, we get cliches and deflections, standardised phrases that mean nothing but discourage the interviewer from asking too many more questions.
Why these interviews have been customised as part of the broadcast package is to partly fill in dead time and probably because someone in marketing gave the bosses a PowerPoint presentation a while back that used the terms “enhanced engagement”, “touchpoints” and “improved viewer experience”.
But the biggest reason these exchanges happen is in the hope that it will induce an F-bomb, or some supposedly unforgettable moment where a player provides a viral clip for the ages.
No doubt there are bonuses regularly paid out to C-suite occupants in Broadcast-Land for reaching various, irrelevant and madly conceived KPIs, which enhances this idea that the advent of these pre-match, mid-match and post-match live interviews has literally created winners and losers.
