Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc
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@junior Fully agreed about the local media not wanting to upset their mates or contacts. But that’s why I bought up Ireland – similar population and rugby competes with other sports, just like we do.
So why are their options for detailed analysis so much better than ours? I don’t know the answer.
More examples – the 42ie. It will have multiple articles from Kinsella or whoever breaking down one facet of the game in minute detail. A dozen stills and a video to show how one strike play evolved and was executed. Can you imagine Stuff or the Herald doing similar?
Tim from Eggchasers can go deep into the AB’s depth chart and discuss random players off the top of his head. Could you imagine the Breakdown guys discussing the merits of England’s fourth choice tighthead or Prendergast’s tackling technique? Ha!
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@junior said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
@JA said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
I listen to a lot of podcasts and it genuinely gobsmacks me at the continued ineptitude of the rugby analysis we get in NZ. You’d think we would have the best technical analysis of games in the world given the prominence rugby has in NZ culture.
Contrast to that Ireland – smaller playing population and rugby competes with Gaelic Football and Soccer. Despite that, there’s 3 Irish podcasts I regularly listen to. (There’s a bunch of other lesser options too.) Yes, they are horribly biased but know way more about the any opposition Ireland plays than any NZ rugby analyst. They tear into the team when they lose and actually spend time to analyse the game and tactics - we get told someone had a good game because they scored a try. It puts almost anything we get to shame.
Do the media think the general public are too thick too absorb content like this?
Surely there’s space for a grassroots type podcast/Youtube channel to fill this obvious void? There’s a bunch of South African ones but mileage varies greatly with these.The rugby-industrial-complex in NZ is too small and no one wants to piss of their mates or anyone in power. While Rattue was a massive prick, the way he was frozen out completely by The Cartel has proved to be a salutary lesson for his colleagues and is probably part of the reason why we have the media we do.
Yup, the NFL realised that it’s an effective form of promotion and freely allows their game content to be dissected by random Youtubers. Whereas World Rugby or Six Nations started giving Squidge copyright strikes for using a 3 second clip of a game.
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@antipodean said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
@MiketheSnow said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
UK based and focussed but very knowledgeable about the global game
All on YouTube
Squidge
Here's an excellent case in point
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@MiketheSnow I won't watch it for the simple reason every video of his I've seen is tiresome, with stupid cuts, pointing out the obvious or just plain wrong. His analysis is generally reddit level dogshit - catering to casuals when in reality it's more often than not surface-level, selective, or just flat-out wrong. I'm uninterested in his cherry-picked clips to retrospectively fit a narrative proven wrong within short order.
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@antipodean said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
@MiketheSnow I won't watch it for the simple reason every video of his I've seen is tiresome, with stupid cuts, pointing out the obvious or just plain wrong. His analysis is generally reddit level dogshit - catering to casuals when in reality it's more often than not surface-level, selective, or just flat-out wrong. I'm uninterested in his cherry-picked clips to retrospectively fit a narrative proven wrong within short order.
Keep enjoying The Breakdown
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@MiketheSnow said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
Here's an excellent case in point
I quite like the guy – he tries to be creative and actually say something new which is more than you can say for 95% of rugby media – but the video is a pretty good example of why I don’t love him.
Every video there’s something that genuinely irks me. At the 16m16s mark, he’s talking about how the Canadian attacking shape is very fluid, showing how they can align on the fly even when it looks like they’re all out of position. As an example, he uses their game against the Black Ferns in Christchurch where Tessier, the Canadian 12, scores after such a spontaneous realignment.
The problem is that it’s a very bad example. The Canadian 11, Farries, runs immediately behind her own player as a result of the poor alignment, which means that the try is eventually disallowed. So rather than working as an example arguing for Canada’s attacking shape, it’s an argument against it, showing the potential downsides of playing too loosely and without structure.
Squidge Rugby doesn’t mention any of this. And that is bad and lazy writing. If you’ve ever attended a class on how to write, one of the first rules will always be to “kill your darlings”. Squidge was probably very proud of his insight on the fluidity of the Canadian attacking shape. But if you can’t find a good example of it actually working – rather than an example which ends up being counter-productive – then you simply need to bin it. If you don’t, it threatens to undermine the whole thing.
You could argue that it’s a stupid rule, that it stifles the creative spirit. But rules are there for a reason. As a wise man once said: “Socks before or after trousers, but never socks before pants, that's the rule. Makes a man look scary, like a chicken.”
And isn’t that the real insight?
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@MiketheSnow said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
@antipodean said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
@MiketheSnow I won't watch it for the simple reason every video of his I've seen is tiresome, with stupid cuts, pointing out the obvious or just plain wrong. His analysis is generally reddit level dogshit - catering to casuals when in reality it's more often than not surface-level, selective, or just flat-out wrong. I'm uninterested in his cherry-picked clips to retrospectively fit a narrative proven wrong within short order.
Keep enjoying The Breakdown
I don't watch it and I'm not the Lone Ranger here for reasons well documented.
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Yeah, I find Squidge to be insufferable for the reasons outlined above.
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I think my "favourite" is the 3 pencil necked Irish dipshits who said Sam cane was a below average rucker, what ever the fuck that was.
And then after he tore thrm a new asshole in the quarter they actually doubled down.
Real insight
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@sparky said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
I enjoyed 1014 Rugby for a bit, but it disappeared around the time of the pandemic. And the presenters were on Spark for a little while.
I know a few things from when they were with Sky. Higher ups at Sky did not understand what they were discussing. There was a token effort to make the show more focused (cover less topics per episode, link ideas together). Because there was a lack of interest from management there was a lack of resources and they just let it die
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@junior said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:
Also, actually having more technical programming that allows the fans to get more of an insider's knowledge about tactics etc. helps fans develop their understanding of the game and therefore deepen their connection to the game
Totally agree. I know someone who has pitched what was internally described as a 'how to watch rugby' show but he couldn't get Sky interested.
Basic idea being that the game has changed a lot in recent decades and newer tactics aren't described well to fans (commentators being at or beyond retirement age doesn't help)
