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  Lawrence Dallaglio used to be really good at it when he was playing. He was a captain and a big character, so he was often interviewed. Even so, he’d always have an interesting way of presenting something new. He’d have a little quote that you’d guess he’d probably rehearsed, but he’d bang it out and it was always good television. No wonder he’s done very well and is in big demand.

  A slightly different example is Nick Cummins—the ‘Honey Badger’. That persona has taken on a life of its own. He’s got the Australian rhyming slang, he’s knockabout, he laughs, he has a bit of fun. Sky can’t get enough of him. That’s his style. ‘Good on you,’ I think when he comes on.

  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want twenty of him, but if you get the chance, as he does, say something interesting.

  Being interesting in interviews paid dividends for me, because, just before I retired in 1998, Sky asked me to come along and be one of the guest analysts for a game—I can’t remember which one. The reason they did that was, yes, because I was a well-known player, fresh out of the game, but also because I’d always tried to be insightful in interviews, some of them with Sky. For them, that was an attractive combination.

  At first it went like this. Sky would ring and say, ‘Can you come and do this game?’

  ‘Okay, sure. That’d be good,’ I’d say.

  Then it was, ‘How about this one too, and the next one?’

  ‘No problem.’

  And on it went. They kept asking and I kept going. First there was no contract—it was an informal week-to-week arrangement. Then it was a one-year deal and finally a two-year rolling contract. It’s been that way ever since. We just sit down and they say, ‘Do you want to keep doing this?’ And I say, ‘Yes.’

  Technically speaking I’m not employed by Sky; I’m a contracted ‘talent’. I like the game. I enjoy watching it and I think I have some good things to say—things to enhance the action and add a bit of colour to what’s patently obvious. I’ve covered all the premiership games for Sky. There’ve been some great games when I’ve thought, ‘I love this’, and there’ve been others when it’s January, freezing cold and it’s 0–0 at halftime. On those days I’d think, ‘Is this what I really want to be doing today?’ But life’s like that. You make the best of what’s in front of you. It’s rugby—there’s something to comment on in every game.

  The key is to steer clear of the inane stuff, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sometimes during the show you’ll get thrown a question that you’re not prepared for or have no answer for—or you’ve only got ten seconds to answer it. Then you’ll come up with one of those ‘Well, whoever scores first . . . will score first’ or ‘Whoever scores first will have an advantage’ type of statements. I’m sure I’ve said both of those at some point—awful stuff.

  The other inane thing people say is, ‘Aw, what a great time to score!’ I always think, ‘Is there ever a bad time?’ These inanities are just something to say—they don’t actually mean anything.

  Funnily enough, I was never particularly comfortable with public speaking prior to becoming a pundit. I’m still not, because I don’t do a lot of it. But when I think about it, it’s a different discipline anyway. When you’re making a speech in public, you are creating content. When you’re broadcasting, you’re reacting to what you’re seeing. There’s a big difference. Obviously, there’s a certain amount of preparation that you should do before you go on TV—there’s information you should know in advance: who’s playing well; who’s not; what’s the form of the teams; who’s injured; how long’s someone been injured; who’s just coming back.

  You know all that, so what can go wrong? You know the game itself inside out, so you just sit there and react. In my mind it’s like me sitting on the couch, watching the game with you. At halftime, before you go and make a cup of tea you go, ‘Hey Michael, what was that all about? Why did they do this?’

  And I try to answer, in an entertaining, succinct way.

  One of the things that irritates me most as a viewer when I watch other sports coverage is when people talk on and on for the sake of filling time. They think that a long explanation or anecdote is good. It’s not. You’ve got to be succinct. To the point, concise . . . unlike me rabbiting on now. I prefer to approach commentary in a similar way to the late, great Richie Benaud. He was never afraid of silence; he let the pictures tell the story—so much so that sometimes you wondered if he was actually still in the commentary position. Restraint is a fantastic skill to have as a commentator or analyst and I’m always conscious of using it wherever possible.

  Obviously I had to learn to alter the depth of my analysis to suit the audience. If it’s, say, the Reds versus the Waratahs at 8.30am on a Saturday morning, the people who are watching are probably pretty interested in rugby and know what’s going on, to a certain degree. So in that situation I might be a little more technical or detailed in my observations, or conversely might let the pictures speak for themselves.

  But if it’s the Rugby World Cup on free-to-air television at 7.30pm on a Saturday night, you’re going to get viewers who may not know a lot about rugby and you’ve got to explain the basics a bit more. But not in a condescending way. Often it’s the presenter’s job to guide the analysis. To prompt the pundits a little. A skilled presenter might ask:

  ‘What do you mean when you say he was doing that, Michael?’

  ‘Why was that good?’

  ‘Why was that bad?’

  I then have to react to what we’re all seeing and give my interpretation of it. My research has been long done, and I talk about what I see, drawing on the information I’ve uncovered in my preparation. I like doing that.

  Q and As at functions are not unlike TV broadcasting; I always really enjoy them. You’ve got a panel of experts and an audience firing off questions, most of which you’ve heard many times before. But coming up with interesting answers is the challenge in front of you.

  ‘Who’s your toughest opponent?’

  ‘Well, mate, I played top-level rugby for sixteen years . . . I could name fifteen,’ is what you think. But in reality you’ve got to make your response to a predictable question entertaining. I usually try to turn it around with a couple of anecdotes, something a bit light-hearted. It’s better than trotting out the usual suspects in a dreary list. That’s too dry. Too predictable. At every one of those Q and As I do, I know I’ll be asked the following questions, though of course there are always some from left field too. But these are the regulars, to which I try to provide interesting answers.

  ‘Who’s the best player you’ve ever played against?’

  ‘Who’s the best player you’ve ever played with?’

  And to take the second one, you think to yourself: ‘Well, there’s John Eales and there’s Timmy Horan for starters. You can’t compare them. They are different players playing different positions with different sets of skills. Would I have them both in my team? Yes! But you can’t say one’s better than the other.’

  But you have to answer. So you tell a story about Ealesy, a story about Timmy, and a story about Philippe Sella or some other great player you’ve played with.

  Or Campo. I always have a story about him, because people ask me about him every single time.

  ‘What’s Campo like?’

  And I can’t just stand there and say something brief like, ‘He’s a prick’, or ‘He’s a nice guy.’ I’ve got to say something that gives the people an idea of what he’s really like.

  While I’m on the subject, I should say that Campo and I always had a good working relationship. I don’t usually get the opportunity to go into it in any depth. But because he’s one of these guys who always divides opinions, people continue to ask me about him.

  In our playing years I got on pretty well with him, particularly early on. Although he’s about a year older than me, we played under-21s together. We crossed over into the Australian team together too. Without being what you’d call close, we got on all right. Then, as we
got older, we played Sevens together; we roomed together. Not all the time, but whenever we did he was always fine.

  As far as his rugby playing was concerned, I’d always have Campo in my team. Whenever I was calling moves of any kind, the first thought that came into my head was always, ‘How do I get Campo involved in this move?’ Funnily enough, a lot of the time his role was as a decoy. We’d use him, our primary weapon, as a runner, to draw defensive cover away from other players. Most of the time he’d end up on the end of the move anyway, because he was a brilliant, supremely gifted player. Also, back in the amateur days, Campo probably prepared better than anybody. He was in the gym a lot more than anyone else and that was on his own time. In some respects he was way ahead of his time.

  He lives in South Africa nowadays. I don’t see him very often in person. But every now and then we’ll drop each other a note and it’s always very friendly. If he came to London and we saw each other at a function, we’d sit and have a chat—no problem at all. I saw him in Hong Kong for the Sevens last year and he was in great form: lots of chat, a great mood. The year before, he wasn’t. He wasn’t enjoying himself and just wanted to leave. We’ve all felt like that at some point. That said, when I saw him in Australia in 2014 for the Grand Slam Tour reunion, he was in great form once more.

  Like most people, me included, it depends when you catch him. I sometimes have to remind myself, at speaking events or Q and As, how important it can be to people to meet you, talk to you for a minute, get a picture or have something signed.

  I was at a Saracens dinner event recently, and by the end I was pretty tired and ready to go home. Just as I was leaving a couple of guys grabbed my arm and said, ‘Mate, can you sign this before you go?’ They were a bit drunk and then some mates of theirs came along too for a photograph. I said, a little grudgingly, ‘All right, here you go. Have a good night.’ I was impatient and possibly a bit dismissive.

  Isabella said to me on the way home, ‘Michael, you should have been nicer to those people.’ I said, ‘I know, but I’m tired and just want to get home.’

  But when I thought about it, she was absolutely right. One of these guys probably told his kids the next morning, ‘Oh, that Michael Lynagh, he wasn’t very nice.’ That makes me think, ‘I should have been nicer’, especially as I was representing Saracens, in a sense, but you just can’t be nice to everyone twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes people catch you at the wrong moment. Or grab your arm, a bit drunk. But I do try to remember, when I’m speaking at an event or sitting on a Q and A panel, that the audience has probably paid money to see me talk. The least I can do is sign something or take a picture with them, but I also think it’s fair enough to expect them to approach me in a polite way. Courtesy works both ways, after all.

  You also have to remember that audiences, if you’ve done a lot of these events, as I have, will have heard most of your stories before. So you’ve got to come up with some new ones every once in a while. What really amuses me is when I tell a true story, then, six months later, I go to a dinner and there’s the story, my story, being told by someone else with English players’ names substituted for the real Australian ones. That happens a lot. I’ve probably done something similar myself!

  COMMENTARY WORK SHOULDN’T BE about predictions and guesswork. Of course you might want to say that a particular game is going to be close or that we might expect to see a lot of tries for a number of different reasons. But predicting a score doesn’t mean anything. Nor do expressions like, ‘I know it’s a cliché but if the forwards can win the ball and the backs can use it, that’s the key.’

  Yeah, we know that. Everybody knows that. You’ve got to try to say why one team is going to get on top. If they’ve got the better pack of forwards, you’ve got to say why those forwards are better. Everybody knows that if the forwards get on top a team has an advantage, but the most important question is always why?

  Whenever England play Australia, the same old adages are always applied: England have great forwards and will dominate the scrums, but Australia have better backs. Everybody knows that. So you’ve got to come up with, for example, a way of explaining how Australia might avoid scrums and keep away from a forward-orientated contest. What tactics might help them do that? It’s not easy, but you have to come up with ideas.

  I might start by saying, ‘Australia needs to move these big English forwards around.’ But then I’ll also need to say how that might be achieved. I might follow up with ‘The Australian lineout is okay. So maybe Australia can play position and use the touchline a bit more to avoid giving England ten-metre scrums where they can push us over and get a penalty try.’ One other thing I’m always sceptical about is statistics. They don’t always tell the story. A team may have most of the possession and be dominating territory but still might be losing the game. The reason? Forwards won’t like me saying this, but getting the ball is the easy part. It’s the decisions you make when you’ve got it and how you execute thereafter that really count.

  Why and how are the two main questions I always pose in analysis. For instance, it’s all very well to say that the flyhalf is really important. Of course he is—he’s important for every team in every game. You have to ask yourself how he’s going to do what he’s meant to do and come up with an answer. Then, in the preview, you say it.

  I always try to think back to what it’s like to be sitting on the couch watching the game with a beer.

  ‘Michael, what exactly has happened there?’ the presenter might ask me.

  Well, everybody can see that such and such passed the ball to that person, but who made the try; who made the mistake in defence—that’s harder for the average viewer to see, so I’d point that out. If the try came off a good move, I’d show how it created doubt in the minds of the defence and allowed somebody to go through the gap. I wouldn’t just say, ‘Great run from Joe Smith to go through the gap.’ There’s always a reason that gap appeared there. It might be that the player inside did a decoy run, or the ball carrier held the ball back. Or it might have happened because the defensive guy came out of the line trying to cover another player he thought would get the ball and created the gap. It’s my job to point this out and explain how and why it happened.

  It’s my background as a player that allows me to do this, and it’s why former players appear on TV. Why wouldn’t Sky or any other broadcaster use people who are familiar with the game inside out? But in addition to that, it’s my job to keep up with how things have changed since I was playing. Rules have changed and the game has become much more physical, so while I played at the highest level, I know that the game has evolved and moved on. If I can’t share my knowledge as a player with the viewer, and if I can’t keep my knowledge up to date, then Sky might as well get my sister on. She can talk a lot. She’s funny. Put her on TV.

  You’ve also got to try to add something unique, something that only you have insight into.

  ‘Why did this player get upset and give away a penalty?’ the presenter might ask me.

  I might answer, ‘He dropped the ball earlier or got late tackled, and he’s trying to make up for the mistake or get rid of some frustration.’

  You often see that with goal-kickers. They’ll miss a kick at goal and then they’ll do something silly because they’re trying to make up for it. That’s an insight I can share because it happened to me. I learned eventually that you have to separate the two roles. Play, and then when a goal kick comes along, move over to that role. If you’ve got none out of six, don’t try to run the ball from everywhere to make up for it. Kicking and general play are separate parts of the game and you must differentiate them. But it’s a very hard thing to do because one affects the other.

  I remember one time when Queensland was playing Wellington back in the early ’90s. I’d missed a lot of kicks at goal, which was quite normal at Wellington because it’s always very windy. The old stadium was up on a hill. But I scored two tries and we won the game. I came off and was interviewed.
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br />   ‘Michael, you got two out of seven but you scored two tries and won the game.’

  Then came a typical question from an interviewer who didn’t know what to ask next.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  I thought, ‘Mate, how do you think I feel?’

  Then I thought a bit more about how I could turn this rather dull question around and make it interesting.

  ‘Well, I feel a little bit like a cricketer who dropped a few catches but scored a hundred. It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. We won the game.’

  Just as when I was playing, I always try to be true to myself when I’m doing television analysis. By nature I’m pretty laidback, pretty calm. Never foaming at the mouth. But nowadays, there seems to be an emphasis on people getting out of their chair and trying to take on a personality that just isn’t real. I sometimes get a little carried away, but I’ve got to be true to my personality. If I’m not, people will sense that and say, ‘Nah, that’s not him.’ If I get genuinely excited, though, it’s fine to show it—I think that makes good TV.

  Equally, I try not to be slow and dull. Monotonous. The viewer will just go and make a cup of tea. I know I would. If someone is animated, enthusiastic and has a good point of view, people tend to be engaged and keep watching.

  SEAN FITZPATRICK: Michael is very professional and always very well prepared. Sometimes we have people who turn up for the job not very well prepared. He always expects other people to be the same way he is: he does not suffer fools and you will never get him to do something he doesn’t want to do. I like to think we have a very good working relationship. When he came back after his stroke I said to him, ‘Whatever you need, just let me know.’ He had a few confidence issues. I always try to be aware of his visual limitations and always think before I put my cup down or my glass down somewhere, ‘Is this going to be in his way?’

  Occasionally we’ve had guests on the show who I know are struggling. Maybe it’s their first time on TV. They’re shy; they’re nervous—we’ve all been in a similar situation. You’ve almost got to jump in—give them some help, keep things moving along. In a break you say something like, ‘Mate, that’s great what you were saying there’, or, ‘That’s really good. That’s the sort of stuff we want.’ You have to be encouraging. A lot of analysis goes on behind the scenes. We’ll notice incidents that viewers might not see. Sometimes, if there have been four tries in the first half, we won’t have the time to show these minor incidents. But if there’s time, we can play them back and talk about them. ‘This is why this team is doing so well. Look at this guy. He made a tackle down in that corner, got up, ran into support. Look at him shadowing the runner.’ You can track him and show the viewers what’s happening.