UPDATE 11:15 02/09/2011
Spoke to a minion at the IRB who assured me that all matches will be downloadable, and this year for free. Couldn't tell me where on the website it will be, but that it'll go up "in the next week sometime, maybe this weekend." The reason they haven't mentioned this at all anywhere is because "it's all still being finalised" and that "there are more important things that need to be promoted." (Like booking 'Official Travel and Hospitality Packages', I suppose)
So two cheers for the IRB! I withhold the final cheer because there's something reassuringly amateur about giving your customers an amazing free service without bothering to tell anyone about it until just days before. 'Twas interesting, though, that when asked if I could speak to anyone responsible for the website, the answer came that "they've all gone to New Zealand." I guess you really need to be there to upload a TV feed onto a server. It's a hard life at the IRB; I wonder how you join them?
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The below was sent to the IRB through their website: www.rugbyworldcup.com
Spoke to a minion at the IRB who assured me that all matches will be downloadable, and this year for free. Couldn't tell me where on the website it will be, but that it'll go up "in the next week sometime, maybe this weekend." The reason they haven't mentioned this at all anywhere is because "it's all still being finalised" and that "there are more important things that need to be promoted." (Like booking 'Official Travel and Hospitality Packages', I suppose)
So two cheers for the IRB! I withhold the final cheer because there's something reassuringly amateur about giving your customers an amazing free service without bothering to tell anyone about it until just days before. 'Twas interesting, though, that when asked if I could speak to anyone responsible for the website, the answer came that "they've all gone to New Zealand." I guess you really need to be there to upload a TV feed onto a server. It's a hard life at the IRB; I wonder how you join them?
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The below was sent to the IRB through their website: www.rugbyworldcup.com
Dear International Rugby Board,
During the last World Cup in 2007 your organisation brilliantly offered every single match, in all their glorious entireties, for online download for a very reasonable fixed fee (admittedly after each match had finished). As I live in Brazil and you cannot get more than the opener, and quarters onwards, this was a stroke of genius on your part. For around £50 I was in Rugby heaven; the best money I ever spent, and that includes the 30p for a dead frog I bought off Nigel Candy in 1982. High praise and value indeed.
It was such a wonderful idea that as this World Cup got closer I pottered down to your website to look for the payment links for this year's iridescent selection. I found nothing, but was I concerned? Not even in the slightest. So I emailed you. I received no reply after a couple of weeks but I figured that an organisation such as yourself is large and rambling. It is one run by those who might not find their 'special place' in the hurly burly of the wider world; the sort who are often a little short-sighted, a little, dare we say it, backward. So I fretted not; No, No, No!
Instead, I called you. And O, joys of joys! How wondrous strange and invigorating is the telegraphic revolution; Brazil to Ireland in but seconds and for just pennies. We truly live in a golden age. I spoke to a very nice girl who, while initially unable to answer my query, went away (leaving me to delight in some turgid music) and returning told me that "Yes, this year would be the same as last time" and I was happy, happy at her answer, and with her soft brogue. So happy in fact that my wife told me to stop bothering her and go away.
Instead, I called you. And O, joys of joys! How wondrous strange and invigorating is the telegraphic revolution; Brazil to Ireland in but seconds and for just pennies. We truly live in a golden age. I spoke to a very nice girl who, while initially unable to answer my query, went away (leaving me to delight in some turgid music) and returning told me that "Yes, this year would be the same as last time" and I was happy, happy at her answer, and with her soft brogue. So happy in fact that my wife told me to stop bothering her and go away.
Now that there's only a week to go, I'm confused. I look and I look on your website, I your download mobile pap, I scour every page that might hold the key to getting my rugby jones. I even, when prompted to by your Video page, download something called 'Silverlight', which sounds like a description of the soul. As the page reloads I shiver in anticipation. Could this be it? But once again, no. Instead I am watching the dismal 1999 final and there's no sign of anything current. I find plenty on your “Worldwide Partners”, your “Official Sponsors” and your “Tournament Suppliers” but now, after a day of fruitless endeavour, I have to admit defeat. I can find no mention of downloading whole matches.
Dark and molten thoughts start to crowd my mind. Suspicion pours into me from the shimmering air. My hatred of marketing and TV rights types surges to the surface from its dungeon depths. The years of suffering, living abroad, and being denied televisual rugby fuel the conflagration. My Golden Retriever, Winston (named after both Smith and Churchill, if you please), starts to look distinctly nervous.
Dark and molten thoughts start to crowd my mind. Suspicion pours into me from the shimmering air. My hatred of marketing and TV rights types surges to the surface from its dungeon depths. The years of suffering, living abroad, and being denied televisual rugby fuel the conflagration. My Golden Retriever, Winston (named after both Smith and Churchill, if you please), starts to look distinctly nervous.
Rugby, that once glorious, chaotic amateur spectacular now transformed, by the steroids of big money sponsors and greed by committee, into a boastful and flaccid gladiatorial meatfest is slipping from my eager grasp. Those years of frustration build inside me, threatening to overwhelm my very core with rage. My dog slinks to a safe distance. The shirt on my back ripples and tears as waves of keyboard-smashing pugnacity subsume my very being.
So here I come, to your 'Contact Us' page. To the little box the has some residual text that reads “Insert here your suggestions”. The grammar apart, this is concerning. I do not have a suggestion for you. At least not yet, and it'd not be one you'd want your daughters to hear. I have a question. Contacting you to supply you with a suggestion implies that you're not going to reply. After all, there's very little obligation in a suggestion, one can safely ignore a suggestion and still tread the trapeze of acceptable behaviour.
We both know that you're not going to reply, though, are you? I didn't think so, but I will certainly wait in hope. I will wait for an answer that doesn't involve the modern televisual sporting equivalent of the Nuremberg defence, namely “Television, advertising, territories, agreements, contracts, increase in viewing figures over last event, blah, blah blah.” Because if you do want to send me an answer and it does involve any of the above I shall rain down upon your heads a volley of vile curses and heinous invocations of pyroclastic proportions. There will not be a blade of grass in any of your tidy garden lawns that has not had wished upon it such a plague of foulness as men have never seen. So, see how but just your flora is excoriated by my wrath! Now, imagine your very souls exposed to this and much worse. Imagine it and weep!
Weep, and weeping, Give Me My Rugby!
Please.
(Or perhaps some tickets to the 2015 final.)
Please.
(Or perhaps some tickets to the 2015 final.)
