EARLY IN FULL Contact, Marcus Smith delivers a post-training message to a huddle of England team-mates. “There was too much thinking in that session.”
That sets out the stall of Netflix’ new eight-part series on the 2023 Six Nations. The more cerebral elements of the game are hardly recognised at all, and are relegated way beneath its physicality, which is treated as the game’s main selling point.
A huge portion of game footage is treated with bone-crunching, flesh-smacking slow-mo, and players and coaches queue up to testify to the violence.
“Rugby is primal, bone on bone”, says England’s Ellis Genge, while Fabien Galthié tells us that France have studied Napoleon’s battlefield tactics to learn that the best route is that which is most direct.
The multi-part, fly-on-the-wall Netflix documentary has recently become sports’ must-have accessory. Everyone wants a bit of the Drive to Survive bonanza, which is credited with widening F1′s popularity across the globe. The problem is that very few of the subsequent follow-ups have been any good. (The tennis and golf equivalents were admittedly hamstrung by featuring tennis and golf professionals, among the least relatable people on the planet.)
The Six Nations inked this deal with Netflix rather than the individual unions, which means as a result some teams provided much more access than others. Ireland regrettably granted little. Whereas some coaches are mic’d up for matches, Andy Farrell isn’t one of them, and the series actually has to repeat Irish training footage across the series. Andrew Porter is an engaging and generous interviewee, though Jonathan Sexton largely keeps his counsel. Bar one very enjoyable dressing room scene in the aftermath of the Grand Slam win, don’t expect to learn anything new about Ireland.
Handing subjects a swatter is the death knell of a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Wales and England divulged even less than Ireland, which is especially unfortunate given the circus that erupted around Wales during the tournament. The possible strike action ahead of the England game is covered, but in no greater detail than the press managed at the time. We don’t get any footage of private player meetings, nor stormy confrontations. Wales in fact made a near-parody of the whole thing, holding dressing room huddles at one extreme end of the dressing room with a fixed camera and microphone at the other.
But every cloud and all that: this documentary may not have survived excessive participation by England coach Steve Borthwick, given his stunning lack of charisma. His player Ellis Genge, though, emerges as one of the stars of the series, who along with Porter, is one of the few players comfortable with the audience getting to know him.
We get much more from Scotland, though Gregor Townsend tip-toes around his previous fallouts with Finn Russell. Townsend wears a microphone during matches, however, and Stuart Hogg delivers some truly delicious Scottish confidence ahead of the meeting with Ireland.
There are some other fine moments, and few eclipse Shaun Edwards speaking his uniquely gruff French, his mouth curled at the edges like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
The series stand-outs, however, are the Italians. There is a black comedy to their candour and earnest efforts in the face of successive beatings. Coach Neil Barnes attributes the opening-day defeat to some players not working hard enough, and at times gives the impression he doesn’t particularly like any of his players.
The Italian coaching staff play the part of Guenther Steiner here, the hapless Haas boss whose endlessly failing seriousness made him the headline act of Drive to Survive.
Kieran Crowley is part- head coach, part-pundit, saying Italy’s run of results means they have “no credibility and no respect.” Later he stands in front of his players and tells them, “We are not fucking good enough, and we have to accept that”, and in the next scene tells his coaching staff “we need to keep the positivity up.”
Their story is a reminder that if history is written by the winners, then the best fly-on-the-wall documentaries are written by the losers. Strife and struggle and tension and failure is the stuff that makes this genre interesting. It’s why Sunderland ‘Til I Die was so much better than any of the Premier League side’s versions, and why Graham Taylor and Leyton Orient’s John Sitton sit among the firmament.
A series focusing squarely on Italy would have been a far better watch, but this series was commissioned not necessarily to tell the best story, but to promote the Six Nations to a wider audience.
This is another sports documentary series that is built on a kind of pseudo-access, where cameras show us unfamiliar settings but rarely tell us anything we didn’t already know. Even Crowley tells us at one point, “How I really feel, you can’t say on camera.”
This is a glossy series that is not without merit, but is at all times pervaded by a sense of holding-back; of things not said and of access not granted.
The series is a reminder that rugby still sells itself on its physicality, but one wonders for how much longer it can do so. During one episode, Italy’s Sebastian Negri recounts a 2022 concussion against England, speaking of how he has struggled for form in its aftermath, while his girlfriend admits she briefly worried he was dead. Negri then sits in a team meeting at which Neil Barnes tells him and his team-mates, “I want to see some violence this week. They fucking get it.”
So perhaps Full Contact said more than it meant to.
