The RWC Angst starts here
0Oh New Zealand. You’ve let us down a bit today.
The organisers of next year’s Rugby World Cup have put out have put out a television commercial, based around Game of Thrones, and it’s aimed at the local market.
But wait; there IS NO MENTION OF THE ALL BLACKS, and the All Blacks are the world champions, and where is the respect and how arrogant are the Poms?
It started off with concurrent stories on Stuff and NZHerald websites this afternoon. Clearly slow news day clickbait gap-fillers, but the comments went off. “We will show the Poms who’s boss” type feedback. So it therefore became feature items on both news channels tonight, and, quite bizarrely, on Checkpoint. That’s right Checkpoint; where you would have thought there would have been weightier issues to discuss.
All a bit toe-curling really. This is exactly what Stephen Jones and Mark Reason feast on
This is an ad for an English market, featuring a cult English TV programme with people sitting around in the jersey of … England. Before any international tournament you get the hosts firing up some patriotism in order to sell tickets; remember the Stadium of Four Million? The funny bit is the Milton Keynes reference, but that has been lost in the national outrage.
There will be many such ads between now and when the World Cup starts; all aimed at a different audience, and the majority of them tailored to certain tournament sponsors.
Oh the angst; and we’ve got 14 more months of this. If you thought the Weight of a Nation thing was something buried in 2011 you’re wrong
Anyway, forensic All Black fans found a part where there was a Silver Fern so apparently the outrage isn’t as bad as first feared. Although if you can find the reference at 0:58 then you probably need to chill out a bit.
UPDATE: But wait, there’s more. Now the NZ Herald takes the outrage to a new level in spotting New Zealand has been left off a map in an e-mail promoting ticket sales. It contains the line “Are the hosts of the next year’s Rugby World Cup playing mind games with the All Blacks?“
The answer to that is “not intentionally”