Embedded in the dank depths of a scrum

Despite what CNN says, ’embedded” reporters are nothing new. They’ve been around forever in sports journalism, and anyone at an Indian press conference during the World Cup would not have needed a proctologist to see that Sourav Ganguly has six or seven scribes firmly embedded near his colon.

But when it comes to journos in the field, sport has been left behind. Of course there are the golf whisperers who mutter sweet nothings to us as they lie prone in the primary rough, and now and then Mike Haysman will don his chemical warfare suit and venture into a tame-looking section of the crowd at St George’s Park to hand out cigarettes and ration packs, but on the whole it’s strictly long-range stuff from the safety of the commentary box.

We can only imagine the cornucopia of audio-visual delights that await us should the major sports networks recognise the basic human compulsion to watch hour after hour of confused and conflicting reports from numerous locations —

‘Well, er, Darren, I’m talking to you from the front row of a scrum somewhere at Loftus Versveld — of course Sarfu policy dictates that I can’t tell you exactly where we are for fear of giving our position away to the Wallaby backline — but I — hold on — yes — uh-huh — Darren, I can now confirm that someone has put his hand up my shorts. There is definitely a hand, a male hand, and it is up my shorts.”

Graphics featuring hands and groins will immediately be wheeled out and discussed by retired surgeons — ‘Yes, Darren, this is what a hand looks like, you see it has four digits and what we call a thumb” — but soon it will be time to cut back to the fuzzy picture beaming in live from the base of the scrum. ‘Can you tell us what those huge glowing green blobs overhead are?” ‘Yes, Darren, unconfirmed reports suggest that those are Lawrence Sephaka’s buttocks as seen through our night-vision goggles.”

Naturally it won’t all be as glamorous as this, and there will always be those unfortunate few who will spend their summers embedded at fine leg, fighting off clouds of mosquitoes and stray dogs as the Montreal Mooses bat out a draw against the British Columbia Beavers. Luckily Canadian summers last between 10 and 12 days. (If e.tv ever realise that reporting on the art scene in South Africa is like trying to report on the hygiene scene in a Thai prison, Nicky Greenwall will make a splendid embedded reporter in Canada. Or Chad. Or anywhere.)

Likewise there will always be the lugubrious SkySports stringer who finds himself embedded on the Paris-Dakar rally with two bipolar Frenchmen in Peugeot station-wagon 5 000km from the nearest flush toilet.

After 10 days of being used as a human jack will he embed Pierre and Henri in the nearest Libyan sand dune? Will the daily wrap-up show a camel and then some dust, or first dust and then a camel? Our reporter being slowly ground into the Sahara under a Michelin raises the question of participation.

Watching CNN’s middle-aged embeddees crouching behind sandbagged tanks, white-bread Darth Vaders under enormous helmets, one can’t help entertaining the vicious hope that they will be handed a pistol and ordered to hold a bridge until death or glory, and — if an American unit is overrun — Ted Turner’s Salusa Scouts are soon going to find that fuzzy microphones are fairly ineffectual against Iraqi armour. Can embedded reporters fight? If so, will sports journalists play?

Mark Boucher probably hopes they will. Roll on the day when he can wave to Ian Healy, crouched over a satellite phone at short leg, and toss him the gloves when those pesky nicks start flying around.

Shift the boy wonder to slip where captain Graeme Smith can stop worrying about his forthcoming matric exams for a moment and give his former wicketkeeper a

reassuring grope on the bum, and all will be well. There are also some who might

enjoy watching Andy Capostagno slot into the back-line against the All Blacks, just to see Tana Umaga turn him into goateed boot-polish.

This, of course, is unkind and vindictive. I would far rather see Andy alongside Nicky in Chad. But the final argument for ’embedded” reporters is Naas Botha, whose

talents are entirely wasted in the studio. Surely it can only be a matter of weeks before he is snapped up by Dairy Channel to cover milking competitions from Bloemfontein to Brussels: ‘But on the udder hand, Darren —”