KEY POINTS:
It was a pretty bizarre old day in Edinburgh. We all waited in darkness in a very cramped press bench before the test at Murrayfield when one of the whitecoats eventually wandered over. He mumbled something about the lights being switched to full power before kickoff but not to hold our breath. Handy, very handy.
I admit, if I had been thorough in my touch-typing lessons and not peeped out continually from underneath the apron which they had draped over the keyboard at journalism course all those years ago, I could have dealt with the darkness at Murrayfield. But scanning the press benches it was clear the bulk of the pressmen and women there had been brought up in the look at the keys rather than touch typing approach. There were anxious looks from some of the troops who were supposed to file several times during the test for their wire service agencies. A couple were not fazed by the darkness but most were. Eventually the lights came on and the relief from the newspaper correspondents was audible.
At that stage the follow-the-leader All Blacks were out on the field having made their way from the dressing room, across the running track onto the middle of Murrayfield. Perhaps captain Keven Mealamu could see in the dark but another of his teammates told me later he couldn't see a thing and just trusted he did not trip over anything. Had that happened and someone turned an ankle, it might have cost the Scottish Rugby Union more than their power bill savings in an insurance claim.
While we are on this pre-match stuff, it has always struck me as ludicrous that teams have to wait around while there is all sorts of pre-match ceremony, national anthems and other festivities before they get into action. It is worse at World Cups. These blokes have spent time warming up inside their changing rooms and are then sometimes held for up to 10 minutes while the pre-match puffery concludes.
Players rarely take part in those moments while the crowd does not really care if they are involved. Once the players are out there they want the test to begin. Let the crowd enjoy as much pre-test entertainment as they like. Have calf-roping challenges, barbeque bakeoffs, jelly-wrestling whatever, heaven forbid even a curtainraiser involving secondary school teams but when the test is due to start, fire the teams straight out onto the field and get on with it.
Wynne Gray
Photo / AP
