A lot goes on behind the scenes for reporters covering the 2023 Rugby World Cup. The NZ Herald and Beyond the Game's Cheree Kinnear gives a sneak peek into life on tour. Video / NZ Herald / Getty
A lot goes on behind the scenes for reporters covering the 2023 Rugby World Cup. The NZ Herald and Beyond the Game’s Cheree Kinnear gives a sneak peek into life on tour.
Picture this: It’s 4am and you’re finally off to bed after a long night covering the All Blacks’ win over Namibia in Toulouse.
Everyone else has already gone to bed so you tip-toe to your room with only an iPhone torch to guide you.
You’re still buzzing from the high of game night and that, along with the loud rugby fans still partying outside in the streets (because the French go hard), is making it impossible to sleep.
What time was that press conference in the morning? You ask yourself, before trying to calculate how many hours of sleep that left you.
You toss and turn before slipping away just as the sun starts to rise.
A few hours later your alarm jolts you awake and you drag yourself back up. Your head hurts and the night before is a haze. You feel as if you’re hungover.
You fire up the coffee machine and get set to do it all again.
This is life on tour – or at least, the not-to-glamorous moments of covering the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
From lugging 10 suitcases on and off trains on travel days to standing pitch-side in the pouring Paris rain to film an All Blacks training session to being told by a senior colleague to always have an “emergency baguette” on hand because you just don’t know when you’ll have time to next eat, a lot goes on behind the scenes.
The tournament itself has been a marathon. Eight weeks of following the All Blacks from Paris, to Lyon, to Toulouse, to Bordeaux, back to Lyon and Paris again.
That’s equated to more than 20 hours worth of press conferences, roughly 50 hours in the back seat of an Uber and 10 hours on a train.
Fuelling us through it has taken an average 560 coffees, 170 baguettes and well over 50 croissants.
Like any overseas work experience, there’s been highs and lows.
Cheree Kinnear edits a Beyond the Game episode from a French footpath.
The most pinch-me moments I’ve enjoyed on this campaign have been on game nights – which is funny because they’re always the most stressful and somewhat chaotic days on tour.
We arrive at the stadiums up to four hours before kick-off to be checked through to the media zone. It sounds like a silly amount of time but as has been proven, nothing is smooth sailing on game day.
For example: On the opening night of the World Cup my accreditation was declined at the gate.
None of the security guards could speak English and my French is terrible, so understanding what was wrong with my pass and what I needed to do to fix it was as challenging as trying to understand how the Arc de Triomphe roundabout works.
Elliott Smith and Cheree Kinnear before filming for Beyond the Game.
An organiser eventually pointed me to the accreditation centre – which was on the opposite side of the stadium. I then spent about 20 minutes pushing my way through the thick crowd of fans outside Stade de France in 35C heat.
I got my pass fixed and returned to the gate almost an hour later, drenched in sweat. They waived me through and I couldn’t stumble into the air-conditioned media room fast enough.
I also got to celebrate my 27th birthday on tour in a rather memorable fashion – sitting on the sidewalk outside Lyon’s OL Stadium editing a show on my laptop at 1am. But the All Blacks gifted me a win over Italy in return so it wasn’t all bad!
I can’t quite remember what it feels like to live day-to-day life with a stable routine because as cliche as it sounds, no two days on tour are the same. But with the end now in sight things feel rather bitter-sweet.
I never thought ‘d say it, but I know part of me will miss the rush of those 4am game night finishes.
