International RugbyRugby Internationals and the National AnthemsBy David Forward
There are so many anthems and such a wide variation in styles. Some cannot help but raise passion whilst others, I would personally say, were more suited to funerals or torture.
My own national anthem is one of the worst and I always turn the sound on the television off when its playing but my two favorites are "La Marseillaise" and "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau".
Being in the crowd at an international there is only one thing guaranteed at the occasion other than for your side to win or lose, and that is, to be one minute stood alone in the crowd as an individual with your own personal thoughts, and the next few minutes to be transformed into a single entity with thousands around you as you all sing your national anthem.
The random noise of excited chatter before the match is suddenly converted into a single harmonized wall of sound, a tsunami wave on which all your emotions are riding along with all your country folk. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and a cold shiver runs down your whole body. For several moments your mind loses all memory of what it is to be a single human being as you become just a single cell of a huge monster. This experience I think is often more obvious at Welsh, French and Scottish games.
There is however something in a way opposite to this, a very embracing event to see and hear. It is watching Television when the away team are shown as the camera tracks down the row of team faces showing some players doing their very best to sing and others struggling with the words or not singing at all. But worse still, the TV sound feed is coming from this camera. It only lets you hear the strained voices of one player and then the next against the faint and muffled distant background sound of their fellow away supporters far across the other side of the stadium. The effect is of, hearing through a wall, some drunken individual struggling with a strange song in his bathroom next door. Not very rousing for those watching from abroad and should be an embarrassment to the home country's television company.
When your team score or the other team does, the personal levels of emotion vary all over the stadium. The combined elation seldom equals the combined sound of say the Welsh fans in the Millennium Stadium singing their National Anthem at a Final. This combined sense of belonging to a nation and the atmosphere at the event cannot be experience unless you are there and part of it. It doesn't matter if you have the worst voice in the world because the singing is so loud you cannot hear yourself but you know you are singing.
Television can show the viewer at home all that goes on and is able to show far more than most of the stadium spectators can see of the game but it cannot transmit the atmosphere, only give a weak sense of the big occasion. With good planning and use of the technology however, combined with the television sound systems of today, it could get you as near to being there as possible. But this, it so often completely fails to do.
It is the spontaneity of the crowd, their enthusiasm and their surprising knowledge of their anthem that produces the sheer volume of sound. On screen you see the wonderful sight of amazing variation in size, build, height and individual faces of the teams as the cameraman walks down the line, so as the commentator can tell you all their names as if anyone didn't know, as royals, ministers and officials are introduced to the team members.
That is all very well and not to be missed, but many a commentator will destroy the occasion by again talking when this camera move is repeated for the singing of the anthem. It is painful enough that certain team members have not learned the words in a training session or when they fail to even open their mouths and you sometimes wonder if they are in the right team.
What is needed here right now most of all during the TV coverage are microphones that point at the appropriate supporters areas in the stadium, that are fed to the edit room output for transmission to the viewers, of a totally uninterrupted singing of the National Anthem. It is as important as a winning try to complete the TV occasion, if the viewer is to feel they are being given as good as possible, the atmosphere the commentators will have been banging on about so much in their introduction.
What amazes me is, that a top world broadcasting company such as the BBC, fails continually to present successfully the best of these one off sensations. Much work is put into placing cameras at the best positions in other sporting events to capture the best of the action. Yet here with something so simple to organize they fail so miserably.
Different countries governing bodies and stadium operators organize famous opera singers to lead the anthems and sing alongs as pre-match entertainment. But these technically perfect singers cannot be matched by an untrained crowd who find it difficult to sing along to unknown verses at unusual tempo with often unexpected introductions by bands playing someone else's anthem very badly. Professional singers are all very well but when it comes to the national anthem nothing at all can match the sheer volume produced by the crowd. You only have to stand in one to understand.
So microphones from podiums, opera singers, cameras and especially commentators should all be silenced during the singing of the anthems. Only microphones directed at the appropriate nations supporters area in the crowd should be fed live to the TV viewers and this can accompany the camera panning down the team faces. Then and only then will the TV viewers at home be able to turn up their volume full blast and feel as if they are there supporting their team and country. That is the atmosphere we want.
David Forward [http://www.davidforward.co.uk]Malmesbury Memories
David's [http://www.malmesbury-memories.co.uk/rugbyindex1.html]Rugby Pages
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