Balls!

'Fast ball!  Fast ball!  Fast ball!'

Ah, the Six Nations.  Good because it’s rugby, good because it’s a major tournament, great because it’s one of the rare sporting events that is broadcast on the BBC.  If Sky and ESPN continue their domination of sports broadcasting, the only sporting choice left to those too tight to pay to watch their team perform disappointingly is going to be Little League and fights in pub car parks.

The thing about the Six Nations is that one starts the tournament with such high expectations and, because it is stretched out over a number of weeks, it takes a while for those hopes to be crushed.

'One can’t help but feel that cricket might be improved if the batsman occasionally 

chased the bowler around the pitch with his bat in response to irresponsible bowling'

There is also spectacle.  At Murrayfield they have a piper and a field gun, presumably to keep order if Scotland actually score a try.  There are the anthems, everybody singing, everybody crying.  There’s also the ever present threat of a bit of off-the-ball action, which is what a punch-up between players is referred to as.  This is not the sort of behaviour one would expect to see from professional sportsmen, although one can’t help but feel that cricket might be improved if the batsman occasionally chased the bowler around the pitch with his bat in response to irresponsible bowling.

The downside to watching the Six Nations is the commentary.  For some strange reason, the BBC’s rugby commentary team seem to be afflicted with a disproportionate number of old women.  Not that I have anything against old women, old women are lovely, it’s just that when an ex-rugby player is being unswervingly negative about a team who, whatever their performance, are sweating and bleeding and steaming in the driving rain in order to win the game, it does rather detract from one’s enjoyment.

This is the year though, when I add social media to the mix.  Have you ever watched a sporting event whilst following it simultaneously on Twitter?  It’s fantastic.  It’s like going to the cinema, watching a film and having everyone talking at once, sharing their ill-informed opinions and giving advice to the characters, all in neat little soundbites, but in real time and with the added bonus that there is plenty of ‘off-the-ball’ action between Twitterers (Twonkers?  Twypers?) who do not share the same opinion.

Following Twitter and watching telly has been something of a short-term craze for me this past week.  Once you get into it, it’s hard to stop until you have a breakthrough moment that you’ve seen it all before and, actually, it’s not adding to your enjoyment of ‘Bargain Hunt’ as much as you thought it might.

It is a great idea, real time updates on social media from people who are having the same experience that you are.  Like with so many great tech ideas though, it’s the execution that lets it down.  That and the users.

Because what you are really looking for is somebody to make amusingly cruel comments that add another layer of enjoyment to whatever you are watching.  There’s even an app that allows you to filter social media comments about live television and, in the short term, it is gigglesome but in the long term depressing that so many people are at home at five thirty on a Saturday night watching ‘Jurassic Park’ in their pyjamas.  That’s my thing, that’s not your thing, alright?

I’ve been in a stadium watching a rugby match as part of a social network known as a ‘crowd’ and the comments are, generally, kept to a minimum of ‘ooooh’, ‘ahhhh’ and ‘fast ball!’, which seems to get shouted an awful lot, along with hints and tips and advice for the players and the ref.  These do not, generally, make for good tweets.  Mind you, neither do the things actually being tweeted.

So I’m just going to assume that a live sporting occasion is a shared experience without relying on any actual evidence, and I am going to go on believing that the sort of people who tweet really do have better things to do on a Saturday night than watch ‘Jurassic Park'

in their pyjamas.

They are wrong, of course, there is no better way to spend your Saturday night.