A wet and unsatisfying trip to the Stoop
Yesterday I was in a party of five – three of them Exeter Chiefs supporters – that travelled to the Harlequins home ground in cold, blustery and super-wet conditions for a English Premiership clash resulting in a closely fought 14-12 victory for the hosts.
It is a fact of sporting life that sometimes the bare statistics accurately reflect the course of a game and sometimes they don’t, as was the case here.
At our pre-match lunch in a nearby pub that caters for the rugby fraternity the Chiefs supporters – perhaps out of a degree of respect for Quins but also in my opinion commendable humility on their part – had been uniformly downbeat about their chances of a victory.
With injuries and one thing after another, Jim Baxter’s boys had endured (for them) a bad run of autumn form which they were only now just emerging – as witness their excellent New Year’s Day 19-13 victory over Bristol Bears.
For me, yesterday’s outing only served to reinforce my conviction that – such is the quality of live television coverage of sort these days – for the average would-be sports spectator (especially in these Covid-19 days) staying at home and watching it on the box provides an infinitely better experience than being there in person.
(Don’t get me wrong – the day did have its upsides – a reunion, after an eighteen months gap, with some pals being first among them.)
As it happens, yesterday in all we spent the best part of ten hours in the cause of traveling up to Twickenham from the south coast, having lunch, walking to the Stoop – watching the match from seats at near ground level behind the posts at the north end of the ground – and then retracing our steps home again afterwards.
In the event the visitors gave a very good account of themselves – and might easily have won the game – despite the fact they played the second stanza with only 14 men as the result of a dangerous “tip-tackle” clear out of Quins prop Joe Marler right at the end of the first.
As mentioned, the weather was abysmal for most of the day, which didn’t assist when I accompanied my partner out of the stand at half-time to buy a hot chocolate (to combat the cold), a quest that involved us spending the better part of twenty minutes queueing in near-torrential rain to be served at a coffee truck – and thereby also missing the first ten minutes of the second half as a consequence.
The fact is – for those who ever attend a match – watching rugby from behind the posts is a far inferior position from which to appreciate the goings-on than anywhere to the side of the pitch.
You’re effectively watching the proceedings in 2D as opposed to 3D, which makes it impossible to appreciate the exact geography and perspective involved in the action – especially when, for up to ten minutes at a time, the players are encamped at the far end of the ground.
At some point today we shall be tuning to the BT Sports rugby channel in order to watch a recording of the game “as live” in its entirety – it will be our first opportunity to appreciate the detail of what was actually going on.
