OPINION: Rugby’s Panic Pundits akin to Pro-Wrestling heels

It’s the time of the year for overreaction. Whenever Munster play Leinster, a fever seems to descend on the rugby press of this great nation of ours and, all of a sudden, what has become a fairly commonplace annual loss in Dublin in early October morphs into something more “significant”.

I throw those air quotes around “significant” because this game against Leinster means little outside the actual contest itself. Will Munster win? Will Leinster win? Will it be a draw? These are the only items of significance this weekend.

Everywhere you look these days you see grand proclamations of where Munster are or aren’t four games into the PRO14 season. Former coaches – who, let’s face it, should really know better – are already trying to crank up the pressure on Van Graan for some reason.

Well, I say “some reason” in those air quotes again but the actual reason is; getting booked on TV, radio shows and newspapers to drive ears and eyeballs to see what the hell these scamps have gone and said this time. So if you’re seeing “questions in the media” about Van Graan, realise that what you’re looking at is the way modern sports media works in this country.

When it comes to rugby media in Ireland, in particular as it pertains to big national papers and radio stations, nuance doesn’t sell papers. Nothing really sells papers anymore, in fairness, let alone sports, but if anything was going to drive attention to a sports page it would be the good old “heel promo”.

In professional wrestling – you know, the fake stuff you pretended not to watch back in the late 90s – you often see the “bad guy” or “heel” talking into a mic about how the good guy he’s facing at the weekend was garbage, that the town he happened to be standing in was populated by hicks and slobs, and that you could watch him win the championship this coming Sunday only on Pay Per View.

If he was good, people would tune in to watch him get beat. But they tuned in. Whether they loved him or hated him, he got paid with their eyes and their attention. Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor operate similar schemes.

The same principle of the heel promo applies to “colour” analysts on TV, radio and in print – be it digital or on dead trees. For a price – normally it’s your credibility – there’s a very steady gig in sports media as the “heel”.

George Hook ran that heel gimmick for years on RTE, as Dunphy did before and after him, and we all (mostly) tuned in to watch them be wrong, to watch them gurn and goof for us like clowns in suits and lapel mics. How many times did Hook predict a crushing Munster or Ireland loss before eating crow in front of the TV audience in the victorious aftermath? It was almost as good as the game itself but it was a pantomime. It was pro-wrestling.  

Anyone watching Hook will have seen him take dozens of custard pies over the years as he was wrong about everything from Munster to Joe Schmidt but they will have also noticed that he was being handsomely paid to take those custard pies for the bones of 30 years.

The work is easy. All you have to do is massively overreact to a sporting process in motion, name names, and make bold predictions. If you’re right – which happens roughly 50\% of the time when you predict a win or a loss in a team sport – you get to play the triumphant fool who, despite his bolshy attitude, was right all along. When you’re wrong, everyone tunes in regardless to watch you splutter and bluster about how NEXT week, you’ll be proved right. And the cycle begins again.

These former coaches in the media would laugh in the face of any pundit – be they an ex-coach or not – if they read or listened to some of the guff written and said about Van Graan this week if the same were said about them back when they were actually working as elite coaches. If they were still employable as elite coaches, maybe they’d be a bit more reticent.

The truth about this stage of the season is that no one really knows how anyone is doing, not really. You can guess, sure, but a guess is all it is. The variances of form, new combinations, injuries, trying out new guys (or returning guys) and general early season flux means that you’re only getting half the picture of any squad until the rubber hits the road in the Heineken Cup and even then, you can’t really judge anything until January at the earliest.

That won’t sell any papers but hey, this is a free one so there’s no need to buy the PPV this Sunday.

And if you’re in doubt, just ask George about how many times Joe Schmidt has made him look like a spoofer since 2008. Actually, maybe don’t do that. You don’t want to be there all day.