THESE ARE STILL very early days in the Six Nations’ partnership with Netflix but the behind-the-scenes series has hit a few speed bumps.
The latest reports from Wales say that the Welsh players have banned Netflix’s camera crew from recording footage in camp until their issues with the WRU are resolved. The filmmakers were seemingly told to leave a press conference by Wales lock Alun Wyn Jones today.
Meanwhile, over in Ireland camp, it seems the doors have yet to be flung wide open to reveal all, even if the Netflix crew have been out visiting some of the players’ families as part of their work. It’s understood that Andrew Porter and Finlay Bealham have come in for focus, but it’s not access-all-areas when Ireland are together as a squad.
“They’re just in the background,” said Ireland back row Jack Conan today. “I haven’t had too much one-on-one dealings with them but it’s fine. It’s not something that we’re letting distract us at the moment.
“To be honest, most of the stuff that’s in it at this stage is us just having a bit of craic and playing games before training sessions, so I don’t know if it’s going to be the most riveting TV people have watched when it finally comes out.
“But look, it’s great for the game, to develop it, and get more eyes on the sport and help develop it across the world. I hope it comes out well but it hasn’t been too much of a distraction yet.”
Conan is more concerned about the plight of his Welsh peers. They continue to consider strike action ahead of their game against England amid the uncertainty over their contracts.
It’s a dire situation and Conan spoke of his solidarity with the Welsh players, some of whom he played with for the Lions in 2021.
“Some of the lads were chatting about it earlier,” said Conan. “Obviously Tadhg Beirne was here briefly earlier and he would have a better understanding from his time in Wales.”
“It’s obviously tough to hear with lads that you’ve played with and you know from competing with are in that situation.
“At the end of the day, it’s a job and lads in that position have no job security, so hopefully they sort it out and I hope for the competition’s sake the game goes ahead but fair play to the lads in Wales, I’m sure they’re making some tough decisions about it and hopefully they’ll come out on the right side of it.”
Whatever about events elsewhere, Ireland have been busy at work today and will have a training session against the Ireland U20s tomorrow before breaking up for the Six Nations rest weekend.
Conan reported that the atmosphere around camp was good following Ireland’s two bonus-point wins from two to start this championship, but underlined that they believe there is still lots more to come.
“More than people would think,” said Conan.
“There’s so much that we get wrong at times. We’re looking at clips today and we’ve butchered tries that are simple, easy tries to score with just an extra pass, better communication, better body shape, better body language, things like that.
“There’s always more to be better at. We break it down to the smallest moments of our lifts and lineouts, the way we run our attacking game, our defensive pressure we put on teams, our rucking decisions, our attacking ruck, our defensive ruck, everything like that.
“It’s a constant work in progress. Even the small meeting we had this morning in units [backs and forwards], we let them [France] off the hook massively at times last weekend and I’m sure they’re sitting in their camp going, ‘Yeah, we could have scored here or there.’
“But we’re always trying to push standards here and never rest on what we’ve done.
“We know we want to be better against Italy. We were good against Wales for 30, 40 minutes, it was a more complete performance against France on the weekend but there is such a scope to improve, which is incredibly exciting because we’re the number one team in the world and we’re looking around and aren’t happy with what we’ve produced at times.
“So I think any organisation that is that self-critical and wanting more from themselves is an organisation that is going to go places, so exciting times.”
