World Cup telly team lack match fitness

By GREG DIXON

Far be it for a television critic to make a prediction about rugby, but stuff it, I'm going to anyway.

I foretell that right up to and including the World Cup final in three weeks, fans will moan.

They will moan that the All Black forwards look weak. They will grumble that our lineout still isn't working properly. They will carp about the television coverage on TV One.

Certainly there are irritations aplenty in televised rugby. There is the tedious ritual of the pre-match anthems, which must, it seems, always feature a slow tracking shot of each team singing (or more often than not, not singing) their national song with the camera finally pulling back to their flag. Yawn.

Then there are the half-witted members of the crowd who stand up and point at the stadium's big screen when they realise they're on TV. Idiots. And finally there are the face-painters. Saps.

But in the albeit painted face of the glorious rugby in the final weekend of the cup pool games - rising to the crescendo of the best game yet, New Zealand's win over Wales - it was easy to forget such irritations.

Yet the build-up shows and commentary, unlike the rugby, have not got better as the competition has rolled on. The moaners have a point.

TV One's head barker, Keith Quinn, is without doubt a commentator of the old style: the style favoured by radio broadcasters circa 1956. This was comforting at first. His voice is such a fond memory and his style so down-home, he's like finding and wearing a pair of slippers you thought you'd lost years ago.

But as the pool matches wore on you began to remember why you hadn't really missed those slippers: they're not as good as you remember them.

Quinn is, and this isn't a unique observation, too fascinated by facts. Not big facts either, but little ones. Attendance figures seem to obsess him. In the build-up to the All Blacks' game on Sunday night, almost the first thing he said was that there were 80,000 in the stands. But wait, there was more: in all the pool games leading up to last weekend's final round, more than 1.3 million had attended a World Cup game, he told us.

Do we, those many more millions of us sitting at home, care that 1.3 million lucky buggers got to go where we couldn't? I think not.

Then there are the inanities. "That is a fairly glum-looking Welsh coach, I think you'd have to agree?" Quinn wittered at one point on Sunday night.

"Very Meads-ic, if there is such a word," Quinn said of Ali Williams' outstanding game.

Former Tongan representative Willie Lose, there as comments man after Jeff Wilson headed home, isn't much better, with offerings like "the crowd look stunned".

Much of the problem with Quinn is that he does exactly what a radio commentator does: he describes what he's seeing. But we're seeing it, too, and he isn't adding much value beyond telling us who dropped the ball.

Meanwhile, during the pre- and post-match show, John McBeth appears to be ringmaster at a circus with few attractions.

There is light discussion, with clips of players' form and so on, but no real deconstruction of games, though certainly things have brightened since the dead-and-alive Stephen Bachop disappeared without a trace.

His replacement, referee Colin Hawke, is an amusing presence. Staring at the camera as if it's about to buy him a drink, he approaches every questions like an excited 10-year-old.

Yes, he's a cheery chap, all right, and a nice foil to the laconic Richard Loe, but he is, I think it's fair to say, rather too interested in the referees' performances. Doesn't he know that no one takes any notice of the ref until he makes a mistake?

Neither he, nor Loe nor McBeth, despite their good humour, are providing real, meaty context for the games.

The early evening highlights package has also struggled to add anything meaningful or memorable to the overall coverage. Jason Fa'afoi is also an enthusiastic, bouncy chap - TV One's Oscar Kightley as it were - but his presenting seems more suited to youth television or a music clips show.

And apparently he's struggling for guests. In the final weekend, the important last round of pool play, the best commentators he could drag on were some Aussie netballer by the name of Liz Ellis and One Sport reporter Bernadine Oliver-Kerby.

Oliver-Kerby was particularly hopeless. As a journalist covering the cup you might expect her to be abreast of developments. But in the space of five minutes she revealed she hadn't watched Fiji's exciting near-win against Scotland, nor did she know that England coach Clive Woodward had suggested that Samoa be given the $30,000 his team paid as a fine for having 16 men on the field. Nor even did she seem to be aware that Wales were fielding a second-string team against the All Blacks that night. What the hell does she do with her days?

All in all then, it's fair to say that despite the cup coming to us in glorious free-to-air-o-vision and with the rugby finally getting the heart rate up, TV One's commentary team isn't playing the sort of game we should be seeing. But that fact itself needs to be put in context.

TV One's coverage is certainly no worse (and from a standing start) than the average awfulness delivered by Sky TV and Murray "Malapropism" Mexted.

And expecting television to do analysis on anything is a little like hoping for meaningful conversation from a single-cell life form. Only if television spends many, many hours and loads of money - as it does only occasionally with its current affairs - does television provide anything approaching reflection.

Besides, if I want rugby analysis I pick up a paper or turn on the radio. The only reason to turn on the television is to watch the game.

And with the sudden-death section finally here, a few grumbles about the commentary won't stop me doing that.