A lone voice in the wilderness of rugby commentary

Press, 14 August 1978, Page 15

A lone voice in the wilderness of rugby commentary

By

JOHN COLLINS

The best thing about the Commonwealth Games in | Edmonton, apart from the; fact that they are not being held in Christchurch, is that they lured the regular sports commentators out of the country for long enough for Warwick Burke to cover a couple of big rugby matches. Burke, who was based in Christchurch until a couple of years ago, used to be heard commentating on the occasional local match with an authority and style that even then made me wonder why he wasn’t used on the big games instead of the

race-callers that are usually .inflicted on us. i He clearly realises that, ’particularly when the camera is showing in close-up a line-out or a scrum, the viewer cannot take a quick glance around the paddock to assess likely moves, as the man. in the stand can. By analysing the positioning of the players Burke helps the viewer anticipate and enjoy the tactical side of rugby, to appreciate as they happen movements that other commentators explain only in the action replay. The commentary on the Manawatu v. Australia game was up to his usual standard, though the game itself was regrettably free of the

l sort of gratuitous violence ■the great New Zealand ; rugby public was expecting from this side. If the Australians continue to play this antiquated, pre-Sam-Peckin-pah rugby for the rest of the tour, "the recent issue to the All Blacks of shrapnelproof jockstraps and explosive boots may well turn out to have been another expensive miscalculation on the part of the Rugby Union. On the other hand, if things go in the tests as i they did in the games be-1 tween Australia and the re-|

mains of the Welsh side, the odd 852 bomber might, in the absence of Fergie McCormick, prove a useful asset to the home side. John Kenneth Galbraiths “Age of Uncertainty” showed hundreds of 8525, relics of the height of the Cold War, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of other “mothballed” weapons, the product of an economy dependent on arms manufacture. The footage of mile upon mile of outdated bombers, shown to eerie, wailing music, was fine counterpoint to a very sombre Galbraith’s I portrayal of the arms race. I i found Galbraith hard to take lin the first couple of proi grammes, put off by the

Jimmy Stewart drawl and distracted by the constant cuts and jumps and the gimmicky theatricals. But his style has grown on me as he wanders on and off his card-board-cut-out sets and his historical settings like some morose, stooping, intellectual matchstick man.

Visually, the programme !is stunning in its inventiveness, using television far more effectively than Galbraith’s predecessors in the highbrow market, Alistair Cooke and Professor Bronowski, both of whom tended to give a sort of cross between a lecture and a travelogue.

Yet, strangely, the programme doesn’t seem to have gone down as well with the serious viewing public as the other two. One suspects that this is because things seem, in the British tradition at least, to sound much more authoritative curling from under an urbane upper lip or coming from a man with the sort of Middle European accent that brands him automatically as A Brain, than they do when delivered, however drolly, by someone who sounds as if he should be roping steers.

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