The Tiresome Prankster

By Scott MacLean

Before I start let’s get one thing straight; I’m not a fan of the bloke and certainly not looking to give him any more publicity…

But over recent weeks we’ve – unfortunately – become used to hearing about the antics of one Daniel Jarvis, aka ‘Jarvo69’, a now-serial prankster whose shtick is making a nuisance of himself at sporting events in the UK and beyond. Firstly he showed up at three of the England vs India Test cricket matches, then the London NFL game at Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium between the Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars, and the past two weeks it’s been rugby’s turn; firstly joining the All Blacks for the anthem in Cardiff and then Japan for theirs in Dublin.

If I’m honest, the first time where he simply strolled onto Lord’s was funny, and the second time in the next match where he walked out to the wicket at Headingley all padded up at the fall of an Indian wicket was pretty good too. But from the next time, when he jumped the fence and came steaming in, producing one of the most unathletic fake delivery actions you’ll ever see, and colliding with Jonny Bairstow, he’s been as funny as a fart in an elevator.

I’ll give the bloke credit for one thing, and one thing only. His attention to detail in terms of his kit is right up there. His cricket whites, for example, were spot on for the real thing even down to the number font on the back.

There’s three things for me. One is the bloke himself. I’ll confess to never having heard of him until he showed up at Lord’s and know nothing about his background. But there is that  choice of number, which might as well be the Mark of Cain for idiots. Here, I suspect the group of people who think he’s hilarious and those who are fans of the Alternative Commentary Collective – seemingly his PR agents here in NZ – are two very overlapping groups.

Secondly, there’s the security concerns. The collision with Bairstow aside, he’s shown himself to be pretty harmless and you even wonder if his ‘resistance’ to being removed is simply just part of his act. But not every pitch invader will have the same intent. I’m old enough to remember tennis star Monica Seles getting stabbed by an obsessed and deranged fan in the mid-90s, and such a situation where someone jumps on the field with a knife, screwdriver, or shank with more nefarious desires would be the stuff of nightmares. We might deride gameday security personnel and their managers for some of what they do, but keeping people who shouldn’t be there off the field is their core responsibility. Arguably the most galling image of Jarvo’s antics so far was of him going past an on-ground staff member towards the All Blacks at the Principality last week without them so much as batting an eyelid until he’d joined them. The mask he was wearing when no one else was wasn’t a giveaway?

But lastly, some things aren’t adding up. By accounts Jarvo was only arrested, and later released without charge, after the collision with Bairstow; in other words, only after his third appearance and only because he ran into someone else. I’m far from being an expert on UK law but when football fans there get bans and huge fines at minimum for jumping the fence and confronting their team’s manager out of frustration with what they’re seeing, against a serial pest like Jarvo getting away with seemingly nothing you have to wonder. Does he somehow have accreditation? Is it an inside job? Are we getting a Netflix series in future? Is it a gambling stunt, though even the notoriously publicity-hungry Irish outfit Paddy Power (for one) haven’t claimed any responsibility? Or is just a guy with a thirst for a stake of infamy?

Whatever the end game is, here’s hoping anything further is just nuisance value at best and doesn’t inspire a plague of copycats. But people being what they are, who knows.

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