Larry Ryan: A sinking feeling we don't see much behind the scenes

Is the true reality of what happens after kick-off gradually becoming less interesting than the soap operas and narratives grafted on afterwards by flies on selective walls?

The Australian Cricket Team Dressing Room ahead of an Ashes Test match at The Gabba. The Test fly on the wall series allows viewers a longer look inside the Aussie inner sanctum. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images) 

What became of quicksand, is a question my lady wife often poses. In the television of our youth, quicksand was an ever-present danger. The deadliest predicament. The stuff of nightmares. The leading cause of near-death. MacGyver hauled one or two out, with that roll of cable he had handy, just as all you could see was a hat.

Quicksand and custard pies — as good as obsolete too — were the two staple substances really, of the small screen. Sinking ominously and throwing pies into people’s faces was the full gamut of entertainment. Besides The Sullivans and Sons and Daughters.

Soon the soaps will all be gone too. Long-running shows all over the world are going the way of Neighbours, the Guardian lamented this week. Killed off by reality television.

In decades to come, I wonder will the reflective middle-aged columnist struggling to fill a back page recall the distant days when just about the only thing you saw on television were sportsmen firing stuff across a dressing room in a show of anguish and ‘passion’. In yet another ‘Behind The Scenes’ documentary.

This week alone, Connacht launched Relentless, “a glimpse behind the curtain”. I saw one review which suggested there was a bit too much rugby in it, which would be an obvious concern.

Munster are planning their own “warts and all” series that looks inside the dressing room. “The main actors and personalities who make up the content mean fans will experience all emotions in different scenarios,” they promise, more or less guaranteeing there will be no unbeaten runs any time soon.

We also saw Charlie Austin — remember him — berating some Brisbane Roar teammate for his lack of game management in an A-League ‘fly on the wall’ series. And having it pointed out in return that it might be easier manage the game if Charlie would knock one in at the other end occasionally.

And Amazon Prime released trailers for the new season of The Test, with ‘main actor and personality’ Travis Head flinging his bat against the dressing room wall in disgust at something or other.

Chances are any sporting organisation worth its salt is locked in talks to produce some kind of All or Nothing Last Chance to Dance or Survive access all areas ‘content’.

The kids these days spend forever watching tunnel cams and training ground footage of footballers weaving through polls and volleying 50-yard passes onto each other’s instep. More time than they do watching football matches.

It is no wonder that supporters have seized part of the action and are placing flies on their own walls. This week’s best comedy was provided by the flood of selfie videos of brokenhearted Tottenham fans following Harry Kane’s disallowed winner. Though there are no doubt people out there overegging their jubilation in the hope their dismay will go viral.

The other day there was even behind-the-scenes access to Sky Sports’ NFL show online somewhere. So it may soon be time someone provided a behind-the-curtain reveal into the writing of a sports column. Exclusive footage of top professionals conducting painstaking research via a detour of MacGyver YouTubes, diligently refuelling regularly on another raid of the trick-or-treat stocks, and assiduously self-evaluating progress by clicking Tools-Word Count over and over. Still only 500-odd, would you believe? Would it be worth hurling the mouse out the window in a show of passion to edge things closer to 550? Or maybe just open another packet of Buttons.

It’s nothing entirely new, of course, this desire to see more than what goes on between the first and final whistles. Historically, it could only be satisfied by going to watch training, in a GAA setting. And once those gates started to be locked, you had the kind of obsessive who intently monitored the warmups, after which he didn’t need to watch the match because he already knew what way it would go.

Incidentally, it has taken many years of the Behind The Scenes genre to produce the first ‘flying in training’ — attributed to Troy Parrott after footage from Spurs' summer visit to South Korea found Troy killing the runs while Kane and Son were vomiting and collapsing. That’s the kind of thing reality TV was designed for.

But is it really healthy, what appears to be happening to sport? In a way isn’t it reversing the trend witnessed in the wider world? How come the true reality of what happens after kick-off is gradually becoming less interesting than the soap operas and narratives grafted on afterwards by flies on selective walls? Is it a worry that viewers find there to be a little bit too much sport in the live sport?

Does it suggest the live delivery of sport on television has somehow failed us? Has it become overly sanitised? Are we over-protected? Not trusted to watch a pitch invader or a streaker. Apologised profusely to if real life leaks in a swear word. Not allowed see a bad injury. Minded at all times from the unpredictable. Somehow, the higher definition the picture the further away the superstars have become.

Maybe we are underestimating the Behind The Scenes genre. Perhaps round-the-clock surveillance will fix all of sport’s ills. The doping problem eliminated. Match-fixing, irregular betting patterns, all sorted. In years to come will we ever need to ask what really happened when a Fergie kicks a boot at a Becks? Or when a pizza flies across the players’ tunnel? Will we have seen it all already on a streaming service?

Or will the move by more and more organisations to offer selective 'access' mean the real stories never get told at all, that narratives will never be more controlled? 

And will we one day realise that — like quicksand, which cannot really take you under — 'Behind The Scenes' isn't all that dangerous after all?