Wasps
Sky's the Limit: The Heineken Cup
The prize
By Dobbin
October 15 2010
Can you have too much of a good thing? Last weekend, the first of this season's Heineken Cup, a feast of rugby was available for those who have paid the Sky shilling, with blanket coverage on every conceivable platform and in every conceivable format: main sports channel, red button, internet, HD, 3D. Given the provenance of the brand, it surely can't be long before we get it in 36DD as well.
But were there too many matches on offer? When you know that at the press of a button you can look at a different game (or a couple of different games), the temptation is always to check that one of those other games isn't more exciting, more closely fought and intense, than the one you've plumped for in the first place. The try alerts at the bottom of the screen don't help. While you're watching the umpteenth reset of an anarchic scrum on one side, suddenly a message appears telling you that a five-pointer has been scored in one of the other matches. You fumble for the remote control. You quickly switch over. You're just in time to see everybody walking back to the halfway line after the conversion. Chances are that while waiting for a replay of the try you've just missed, you'll miss another one on the side you were watching originally – a sweeping breakaway from the scrum, perhaps. The upshot is that what you actually witness with all this choice on offer is more like a reverse highlights package – the aftermath to every significant score. When the weekend comes to a close, and you feel like you've watched every match on offer, you realise that in fact you haven't really watched any of them. Making the most out of a Heineken Cup weekend on Sky takes some serious self-discipline, otherwise you're better off having just one match to watch. And if it turns out to be Old Drudgeonians against Borehamrigid, then so be it.
Of course, all this coverage requires manpower, and Sky weren't short of that, either. Like an army on the march, they had conscripted every able body they'd found along their route. Bob 'the Growler' Symonds had come in from ITV. Andrew Cotter had found some time in between his busy golf and Commonwealth Games commitments for the BBC. At the Leinster match, it sounded for all the world as though Father Dougal McGuire had been kidnapped from the Craggy Island parochial house to fill in as summariser. Scott 'the Scot' Hastings was at one end of the country, Will Chignall was getting over-excited at the other end of another country, and Miles Harrison was gushing over Munster – again. All we needed was Eddie Butler weaving his poetic filligrees over the action (leaving his co-commentator – as usual – to do the trivial stuff like describing the game and identifying the players), and the weekend would have been complete. Although, when you've got an avant garde man like Dewi Morris quoting from Edwin Morgan's Loch Ness Monster's Song every other sentence, perhaps Butler's more conventional vocabulary would have been a bit passe.
But anyway, what about the rugby itself? Northampton and Castres had the misfortune to be the first match on offer, and in a fitful game they nevertheless provided some reference points for the rest of the weekend. Or more accurately, the Northampton kickers provided some reference points for the rest of the weekend. Bruce Reihana and Shane Geraghty – the latter making an early season claim for the Kenny Logan 'Under The Crossbar' award – figured prominently during the rest of the weekend. At least they did when Stuart Barnes had a microphone in his hand. Every other team seemed to be fortunate that their place-kickers weren't quite so calamitous as Northampton's. Had I been a Saints fan, I might well have thrown something at the telly.
On Saturday, the game between London Irish and Munster was the centrepiece. Both sets of fans were singing The Fields of Athenry – it was hard to tell which side was winning, and the players probably didn't know whether they were meant to feel inspired or intimidated. Chants of “Irish, Irish” rang out in support of Saliosi Tagicakibau and Seilala Mapusua, and against Ronan O'Gara, Peter Stringer and co. It was that sort of game. At the end, I was in agreement with the commentators in commiserating with London Irish. They'd tried hard, put everything into it, but in the final reckoning they just hadn't had enough in the tank. That old Munster magic had come to the fore again, victorious by a six-point deficit.
Also on Saturday, Leicester so very nearly came a cropper at Treviso. The try alerts from this game necessitated immediate red-button action, as hope battled with expectation and, sadly, expectation finally triumphed. In Toulon, a drab game came to life in the final minutes as Jonny Wilkinson secured his Autumn test berth with a sumptuous pass to Paul Sackey, two Englishmen securing a win for the French team. Meanwhile, in Llanelli, a New Zealander was inspiring the Welsh team to a fantastic win over Perpignan. They did well not to be put off by the visitors' eye-wateringly garish kit. Perpignan obviously weren't so colour-blind. And somewhere in amongst all this action, Alex King's Clermont-Auvergne were putting the boot into Saracens, perhaps in more ways than one.
Sunday arrived, and Stuart Barnes was – where else – in Bath. He mentioned Reihana and Geraghty again. He stopped mentioning Reihana and Geraghty when a perfect opportunity to go for a drop-goal was spurned in the final five minutes. Bath lost – is it better to have kicked and missed than never to have kicked at all? On the red button, Cardiff and Edinburgh were failing to entertain anybody at all, which made the decision easy for once.
And the final game was an easy decision as well. It was the one we'd all been waiting for – those of us who hadn't gone out to Toulouse, that is. The initial portents were not good. It was raining. The mind replayed some of last season's wet-game lowlights: Newcastle at home, Saracens away. It didn't feel good. Toulouse is hard enough as it is, without the weather conspiring to expose your Achilles heel for all to see. Somehow, though, Wasps competed. Sure, there were dropped balls and other spills, but half of them were coming from the French team. The scrum creaked (when it was allowed further than the 'En-' of Engage), the lineout wobbled, but the defence was solid, Wasps kept in the game, kicked for territory, and scored the only try of the match. Until that final Skrela penalty, for a dubious infraction, it looked like the old Wasps again. Still, we secured a bonus point. Had we been Munster, the commentators would have been acclaiming a win, no doubt.
And so we move on to Glasgow, and four points are the minimum requirement from this Sunday's game. We have been drawn with the Scottish team only once before in the Heineken Cup, way back in the 1997/8 season when we won both games. More recently we beat them in a pre-season match, but nobody needs Tony Hanks to tell them that counts for nothing on Sunday. Glasgow currently sit in tenth place in the Magners League with one win from five, that an opening day victory over Leinster. They have lost to the fourth team in our HEC group, Newport-Gwent Dragons, but avenged that result with a victory in the first group game last week. Wasps should be confident but not complacent. Glasgow have plenty of quality with the likes of John Barclay, Max Evans and Graeme Morrison starting for them last weekend. Nevertheless, at home and with a decent home record in this competition, Wasps must start as favourites. Let's hope they finish that way.
The coming weekend promises to be another televisual extravaganza for the rugby fan. Probably happy that ESPN can't steal any of their thunder in this competition, Sky will once again push the boat out, covering as many matches as possible, and offering more choice at any one time than even the biggest die-hard could possibly wish for. I don't know though. It will be something of a relief to be at a live match, to see the full eighty minutes, uninterrupted by replays or try alerts. And after the game, when the next set of matches kick off, it'll be someone else's decision what to put on the box. Just as long as it's not wall to wall football.
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