Accent on the rhotic as Sky show they're anything but provincial

TV VIEW:MISSED THE first 20 minutes and believed Sky Sports had the scores incorrectly reversed. Munster 0 Treviso 5. Twenty minutes gone. Thomond Park. No, no, this must be wrong.

“A most un-Munster-like performance from Munster,” said the Sky Sports analyst, former Ulster and Ireland winger Tyrone Howe.

“Another try,” he exclaimed four minutes later to total silence in the Limerick stadium.

Cue the tumbleweed blowing across the famous ground amid total silence from 26,000 as the camera cut to fans standing, gawking disgustingly at the pitch, their hands in their pockets. There may even have been a touch of embarrassment.

The Munster fan is normally a happy animal. Like the thoroughbred horse, it’s used to good feed, the best tracks and winning cups. To be two tries down against an Italian side is not a place they have been before. Munster have surrendered leads in their glorious past and come back heroically, but never to the chaff of European rugby, who had just happened to beat the French champions Perpignan in their first pool match.

But there are few things in sport that grab attention better than a no-hope team squeezing one of the giants of the game into a lather of frustration and impressing on the minds of fans that this could just be one of those rogue results that although unwelcome, come around every generation.

That the Italian rugby players from Treviso could break Munster hearts as their football team did to soccer fans in Croke Park last week was barely credible and when Ronan O’Gara took a tap penalty at the fag end of the first half rather than kick an easy three points, there were hints of second Test in South Africa flooding through many heads.

Alas for Treviso and credit to O’Gara, the Ireland outhalf’s instinct was good.

Restoration arrived by half-time as Munster went in 12-10 ahead and soon after the status quo arrived with a bonus point try from hooker Denis Fogarty effectively ending the match. Party time and Munster still the greatest team in the world. But hey, they were in a match for maybe 38 minutes.

Mark Robson was more animated for Leinster’s game with Brive. Robson is always animated and those who say his northern accent is not as soft, perhaps, as Howe’s, miss the fact he does bring something to the task of talking.

“This atmospheric stadium can be barbaric at times,” he told us before the teams had taken to the pitch at Stade Amedee-Domenech.

“I don’t want to be a harbinger of doom,” he continued as Leinster captain Leo Cullen led the team out. Coming from Robson those are scary thoughts.

Between Robson and Scott Quinnell there was a sweet marriage of provincial accents. The melodious Welsh with ‘Shane Hoaregone and Rob Kerney’ and the hardcore, more guttural Ulster sound, which we believe makes Robson a rhotic speaker. That’s not e-rhotic. Just rhotic. That’s rhotic without the added vitamin e.

What that means is he pronounces the “r” sound very strongly after every vowel. Rhoticity was at one time a feature of speech throughout Britain, but in England is now increasingly restricted to the West Country, north of Manchester and of course Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Take words like card, restore, upstairs or barbaric and imagine yourself speaking them out loud just like Robson (there’s also a bit of a Jamie Heezlip going on). RestoRe, baRbaRic. Don’t try this out loud in front of the dog or the children.

Yep, it’s as bad as the first half of the Munster match, isn’t it?

Quinnell is more sing-songy. He could be from Cork, if he wasn’t unmistakeably Welsh. But the two amigos, himself and Robson, illustrate one of Sky’s strengths in the choice of their rugby commentators and analysts. The channel is not afraid to break away from the standard English accent of say, someone like the BBC’s Jeremy Guscott or even their own Miles Harrison.

Even Will Greenwood has a nasally voice that’s a little different from central casting and Paul Wallace offers the southern cousin sound to Robson’s north.

And Quinnell? Well, according to last week’s London Evening Standard, the Welsh lilt is so beautiful to the ear even the dolphins in Cardigan Bay speak with a Welsh whistle. Scientists have discovered 250 mammals in the bay have their own distinct Welsh accent.

That follows revelations that . . . wait for it . . . birds chirp and cows moo in regional accents all around Britain. Anyway we are reliably informed the Welsh, especially those from the valleys, use alveolar trill to thrill our senses.

But the last world goes to Robson as Leinster saw out the match. Robson also loves his offbeat facts.

“It’s Waqaseduadua,” cried the commentator, word perfect. “Do you know he has seven vowels in his surname?” And so he does.