Rugby World Cup: Unless we temporarily shift to New Zealand time, following all 48 matches will keep rugby die-hards here up all night, writes Mary Hannigan.
It was American sports broadcaster Bob Costas who told the story about basketball player Marvin Barnes discovering that his team’s flight from Missouri to Kentucky would leave at 8pm and arrive at 7.56pm, due to the change in time zone.
“I ain’t getting on no time machine,” said Barnes, who opted instead to travel by car. Looking at the schedule for the Rugby World Cup, there’ll be a certain “meeting yourself coming back” quality, too, for those who opt to tune in, especially the die-hards who are intent on watching every minute of all 48 matches.
Back in 2002, you might remember, there were calls from some reasonable folk for Ireland to switch to Japan/South Korea time for the duration of the football World Cup, just to avoid the unnatural horror of watching games at silly times of the day and night.
Curiously, most took this campaign as just a bit of frivolous fun, so the proposal was never really taken seriously. Indeed, rugby fans largely laughed it off. They’re not laughing now. Ireland’s pool games start at 7am (USA), 9.30am (Australia), 6am (Russia) and 8.30am (Italy), although, mercifully, they’ll have a civilized enough start when they reach the final – 9am.
“I wouldn’t bank on stunning productivity growth during the tournament,” says Cameron Bagrie. “If businesses don’t plan for it, they are going to end up with fewer people on the ground and that is obviously going to affect productivity. I think it’s important to be pragmatic about it. If your nation is fixated with rugby, there are going to be other things that are just not getting done.”
But the ANZ (Australia and New Zealand Banking Group) chief economist was referring to impaired productivity down his neck of the woods. How will we fare?
Take the second day of the tournament. You’re a rugby devotee, you’re lucky enough to still have a job, but you didn’t plan ahead and used up all your holidays in June.
You decide to stay up for Scotland v Romania (2am), but as that’s ending Fiji v Namibia is starting (4.30am) and, frankly, you can’t resist. The final whistle blows and you reckon you should at least get an hour’s sleep before heading to the office, but then France v Japan (7am) kicks off and, well. By now you’re late for work, so you hang on for Argentina v England (9.30am).
Then you try to ring the office to let them know you’ve been held up, but there’s no answer because they’re all home in bed after watching four World Cup matches on the trot.
Granted, there won’t be quite that level of enthusiasm everywhere – this is rugby after all, not soccer. And while not meaning to diminish the sport’s attraction, it’s probably safe to say that a fair chunk of the nation will be snoozing soundly when, say, Fiji square up to Namibia at 4.30am. The people of Namibia might even be asleep then too, the team’s odds of 2,000-1 to win the World Cup hardly filling them with buoyant belief.
Mind you, after our boys’ form in the build-up, most of the pundits seem to believe we are the Namibia of Europe. George Hook, for example, suggested, “we are in deep, deep doo-doo” after the defeat by France in Dublin.
That might explain RTÉ’s lack of enthusiasm for the tournament – they’ve decided to give us just 130 hours of World Cup coverage across television, radio and online platforms.
They’ll also have only a skeleton staff on duty, with just Tom McGurk, Daire O’Brien, George Hook, Brent Pope, Conor O’Shea, Victor Costello, Frankie Sheahan, Ben Kay, Shane Horgan, Joe Schmidt, Hugh Cahill, Ryle Nugent, Donal Lenihan, George Hamilton, Tony Ward, Ralph Keyes and Kurt McQuilkin called up.
And they’re only broadcasting all the top games – with 13 key matches live, including all of Ireland’s pool matches, the final, the bronze game, both semi-finals, all four quarter-finals and the opening match. There’ll also be highlights of every game on the evening show (6pm-9pm) on RTÉ 2.
Presumably, if they thought we had a chance, they’d have pushed the boat out.
Confidence is low, then, with few anticipating the team returning home to the mother of all winks from Enda Kenny, an open-top bus parade and a sea of inflatable green, white and gold bananas.
Indeed, some are so defeatist about the whole business, they reckon the squad should follow Marvin Barnes’s lead and not get on the flight at all.
That class of talk, of course, only guarantees a successful tournament – inflatable bananas at the ready. Now, where’s the alarm clock?
