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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
But I'm sure many of you like me were watching the opening game of the World Cup last night between Mexico and South Africa. So you may be aware of the big talking point to come out of it. Not the three red cards, but the mid-game water and ad breaks. Because midway through each half, the referee stopped play to give the players a water break and we were given... an ad break.
So is that really necessary or is it just the further Americanisation of sport and life here in Ireland? Well, to discuss all of this, I'm joined now by sports writer Ciarán Cunningham and Paul Hosford of the Irish Examiner.
Chapter 2: What sparked the discussion about water breaks in the World Cup?
You're both very welcome to the programme. To come to you first, Ciarán, water breaks, right? They're not a new phenomenon. We've seen them before in previous tournaments. How do you feel about them?
I don't like them, and I don't think many football fans or anybody involved in the game likes them because they disrupt the flow. Like, it's very much an American innovation. It's a norm in American sport. And largely over the years, that has been dictated by TV. And I think that is, you know, even though they're painting it as a player welfare issue, I think...
The main incentive for FIFA to do this was that the TV companies would be happy with the break. Because there are natural breaks in games anyway. Like any game you watch, you see players taking on fluids regularly. So you don't need two, three-minute breaks. And also the fact that this nice game was at altitude.
And some of the games are in indoor arenas where the temperature is controlled, so it's not particularly hot. But they've put the water breaks in for every game. So that makes you very suspicious of the motivation behind it.
Yeah, I mean, some of the games will be played in plus 30 degree temperatures, where maybe it is a bit more understandable that you have to have these set breaks. But the game last night, it was just 23 degrees. It wasn't that hot. And it was the length, actually, of the water breaks that really struck me. They were three minutes each.
Do they need to be so long? And I worked in the 94 World Cup in America. And I remember Jack Charlton became utterly obsessed with getting water on board. Because a couple of the games of Florida and even the games in New York, they were played in very high temperatures.
And people will remember when the players lined up for the anthem, Steve Staunton, who's obviously red-haired and a pale complexion, kept his baseball cap on. He looked like he was melting. You do have to get fluids on. But last night wasn't...
as jarring as I think it will be later in the tournament because it was quite a one-sided game even though it was tied up to the second half and the sendings off. But I think when things get more tense and the stakes are higher in the bigger games and there's disruption to the flow, people will not be happy.
It's also, Ciara, terrestrial TV, one of the only things it has now that people go to is live sport. And you don't want to give people an excuse to click out of it or to switch off. And during the break, particularly if the game isn't particularly great, people might say, what's in another channel? And they might go back. So I think it could be counterproductive as well.
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Chapter 3: Why are mid-game water breaks considered an American innovation?
And it's something that's not allowed in other competitions or other international games. So why is it suddenly coaches are allowed to make significant changes in two breaks in every single game?
To bring you in, Paul, Ciarán mentioned Fox News last night and it was actually interesting to see Fox News or Fox Sports. They said this hydration break is brought to you by Gatorade. So it was clear that they were going to pump us with ads during that break. I mean, commercially, it's really valuable to broadcasters, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely. And like Ciarán said, one of the few things that Threshold TV and TV in general has is live sports and you can feel it creeping in. Even if you watch the Premier League, you go around the pitches, every team has these full-on LED screens that are around the pitches and they're flashing ads at you constantly throughout the 45 minutes. It's actually quite distracting.
I'm an Aston Villa fan and during Aston Villas, Europa League win this year, the games would have been on TNT Sports. And when HBO Max launched, because they're under the same corporate umbrella, I remember the semi-final first leg against Nottingham Forest. Villa had just conceded.
And as an Aston Villa fan of a certain age, you're sitting there and you're thinking, am I ever going to see us win a trophy in my adult life? Is this going to happen with 1-0 down? And Darren Fletcher, the TNT commentator, immediately goes, the highly anticipated third season of Euphoria is now streaming.
And as a football fan, it just dragged you right out of it and you're thinking, am I here to watch a drama about teens who do drugs or am I here to watch football? It was really, really jarring. And then for every game that TNT had towards the end of the season, there would be a moment, five, ten minutes left, where they would just tell you what's on... what's on HBO Max.
So they're advertising to you as you're watching the game and not just, you know, next week we'll have Liverpool, Manchester United or whatever. It's just, it's constant disembarkment.
If you watch, if you're ever in the States and you watch it because American sports are so stocked and they're used to cramming ads in, you will just have ads that just kind of flash across the bottom of the screen, kind of sometimes animated, sometimes just a banner ad that just come and tell you,
by this thing so it is it's more pervasive I think the thing with the water breaks is that one they break up the play I thought last night South Africa had started to kind of get to grips with the game a little bit they were 1-0 down and their flow was interrupted but I think the FIFA logic towards it this player welfare thing is it's admirable in a way but this is the same organisation which invented a tournament last year which
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