At the FA Women’s FA Cup Final in 2008, for the first – and as far as I’m aware, only – time, we had a streaker on the pitch.
The near 25,000 people in the ground (a record for a non-Wembley final, by the way) saw her. The many photographers pitchside all snapped away. But no-one watching at home on TV got to see her.
This is because there’s a standing order that if anything not related to the game happens, the host broadcaster’s match director cuts away. So instead of the streaker you got reaction shots from the players and crowd. The same thing happens during trouble in the stands or if there’s a pitch invasion.
A player collaspes during a game, however, and all common sense goes out of the window.
The match director was quoted as saying he was waiting for guidance…
At what point, do you think, he thought it might have been appropriate to cut to a wide shot and just leave it there? When someone was applying chest compressions? When Ericsen’s body twiched and shook as the defibrilator was used on him?
And even if the match director lost all sense of reasoning in his desire to capture the event for posterity, how much earlier do you think the local programme director at the BBC should have cut the coverage and returned to the studio? Five of the six people covering the game were former players, who were clearly as upset as people at home were. Better to fill time in the studio than with the commentary team, at least you could show the first half highlights while news was coming in from the ground.
[The reason I know people will have been upset by what they saw was that, five days before my 15th birthday, my dad collapsed at home. My mum and I both gave him chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth, but he died. So now you know too.]
Instead of which we have screengrabs and video clips in circulation on social media.
Most of us, at some point, have been in that position of driving or being driven down a motorway when traffic slows to a crawl past an accident on the other carriageway. We all crane our necks to see what’s happening.
It’s caled rubbernecking. And it’s not what you expect from professional broadcasters.