Saturday evening gave us one of the most surprising highlights of the rugby year. USA vs New Zealand was always going to be a historic occasion given that it was played at a sold out Soldier Field in Chicago, but the fact that us rugby old timers on this side of the Atlantic were privy to the NBC commentary feed was something particularly special.
Before we start let's just say that we don't mean to be overly critical. NBC are clearly trying to bring a game across to an entirely new audience and that is certainly difficult. This is just merely an exercise in cultural comparison. For example, if RTÉ started to show NFL with Ryle Nugent as commentator, you'd imagine Americans would find it quite amusing.
We've already seen how those of us on this side of the Atlantic reacted to the fun, but for anyone who were unlucky enough to miss out, here's a bumper collection of the best moments from Marty Snider and Brian Hightower's fantastic 'intro to rugby' style commentary.
We're particularly enamoured with the use of the word 'rumble' instead of linebreak (or anything remotely physical) as well as a seat on the All Blacks bench being 'pretty good real estate'.
