It’s 7.50pm on a Monday in mid-January and at the premiere of Netflix’s rugby series Six Nations: Full Contact, Marcus Smith is perched uneasily on the edge of a stool, addressing the assembled rugby journalists. Smith is wearing a tuxedo that makes him look like he’s going to the school prom. We were told he had exactly seven minutes to spare. “Yes, 100%, of course…” Smith says in response to the first question when interrupted. “GOOD EVENING TO EVERYONE! Please begin heading to your seats for the start of tonight’s event! I repeat, please start heading to your seats!” The screening is about to start.
Smith, who starred in the first episode as well as the first episode, spent the night running from one camera to another. The truth is, he looks much more comfortable walking the red carpet at a Test match. There also needs to be more space in midfield. He’s got a crew of five, six, seven guys tonight; managers, agents, press officers, cameramen. The two of them are busy recording footage of all this on their phones. I ask them if they’re on Netflix. “No,” they reply, “this is for social media.” In the time it takes them to say this, Smith is already on the move and the pair run away to catch up with him.
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“It’s probably not what I accepted when I was 18, having all these cameras in my face,” Smith admits, somewhat sadly. “But it’s a privilege.” This last part doesn’t sound very convincing. “You see what he’s done for golf, what he’s done for F1 and hopefully he can also bring rugby, the sport I love and the one that changed my life, to a wider audience.”
The success of Netflix’s Drive To Survive comes up frequently in the evening. It has had a transformative impact on F1, particularly in the US, and now sports such as golf, tennis and track and field have signed up their own behind-the-scenes shows in the hope it will do similar things to boost their popularity. So far, it’s not clear that any of them have enjoyed the same kind of pounding.
The first episode focuses on England’s match against Scotland last year; This match is presented as a kind of showdown between Smith and his opponent Finn Russell. Although, as Russell’s coach Gregor Townsend said on the programme, “rugby is the best team game”, the other 44 players are hardly mentioned. Maybe the producers are devoting 45 minutes to the nuances of WP Nel’s struggle for the second episode.
Ellis Genge clearly made the cut. He, too, thinks of a tray at the gala filled with tiny fried canapes covered in gel droplets. He’s been on the move and he’s getting hungry. Part of the art of putting together a series like Six Nations: Full Contact is choosing which of the 200-odd players entering the tournament to concentrate on. Intelligent, outspoken and funny, Genge was the obvious choice. “Obviously Rugby needs all the help it can get,” he says. Genge is a UFC fan and thinks his sport can learn a lot from it about how to sell itself to a new audience. “Ultimately,” he says, “you need that kind of spectacle to elevate your game.”
The focus on the fame of individual players, the sense that rugby is becoming something other than itself, will unsettle some people. But Genge doesn’t have much time for that kind of thinking. “I think we’re in some kind of bubble. Rugby thinks it’s the be-all and end-all, but it’s not. It needs stars, it needs idols, and it needs good press. Look at other sports: football, NFL, NBA, even cricket. People follow not only the team but also individuals. I don’t watch NFL, I don’t know the teams, but I know the players. Will we get there? Who knows? We will find out.”
Russell also has a slower tempo than Smith during the throw. Like Genge, Russell is one of those people who can just be himself, whether there’s a camera on him or not. He took his crew to his house to film with his family. “They kind of told us what to ask each other,” he admits, which is perhaps a little more honest than his press officers would have liked. But Russell is quite relaxed on this and other issues. “If they want to see what I do off the field, I don’t care even if it’s just playing PlayStation with my daughter. “I don’t do anything that I have to hide.”
And Russell adds with a smile: “Thank goodness they weren’t there on Saturday night.” Instead, we see him spending time with his wife and child and working with Townsend. The two are pretty open about their checkered past and the fights they’ve had over the years. Russell hopes the opening will help attract a new audience to the sport. “If you turn it on and see a kick fight going back and forth, viewers might think ‘this is a bit boring.’ “But if you’ve seen the show, I hope it will give viewers a better understanding of what we’re going through and what’s going through our minds during the game.”
And after that too. “It’s good to show your vulnerable side, so people can see what you go through outside of rugby,” says Italian Sebastian Negri. “People only know what they see on TV, they don’t see the recovery that comes with it, they don’t see how you wake up in the morning after games and can barely walk, how you get up and stumble around in your hotel room.” the stairs or my fiancée’s concern about what life will be like for me in a few years due to some of the head knocks and injuries I sustained. I think this will come as a bit of a shock to viewers out there. “I think that kind of insight will only be good for rugby.”
Six Nations: Full Contact will be released on Netflix on Wednesday January 24.