How to film a rugby match

“How to film a rugby match?” The answers you find mostly talk about automatic cameras and masts. An amateur club more often has a phone, a tripod and a volunteer. That is enough, as long as you choose the spot and prepare for what will go wrong.

In the middle, on the side, as high as possible

The reference position is the one coaching guides also recommend: on the side of the pitch, level with the halfway line, above head height. From there you see the defensive lines align and advance, the overlaps out wide, and the depth of the attack. Behind the posts, you lose the whole width; at ground level, the rucks hide everything.

Height matters more than in football: a ruck or a maul, filmed at human height, is a pile of players. Two or three more metres, at the top of the stand or on a telescopic tripod, are enough to see who arrives, who stays on their feet and where the ball comes out. The general rules are in where to put the camera.

A hundred metres plus in-goal: do not follow the ball

A rugby pitch is hard to cover in one fixed shot from the halfway line, especially from a low stand. Two solutions: a wide frame that accepts losing a little detail at the ends, or a volunteer who pivots gently to follow play. In that second case, the rule is to frame wide and pivot slowly: you follow the zone of play, not the ball. A pass out wide must not trigger a sudden pan, otherwise the video gives seasickness and cuts the defence. The options with two devices are detailed in filming the whole pitch with one phone.

Rain and mud

Rugby is played in all weathers, and the phone likes neither. The precautions come down to a few moves:

• A cover above the lens: the stand roof, an umbrella fixed to the tripod, or a clear waterproof pouch. A single drop on the lens blurs the whole image for the rest of the half.
• A dry microfibre cloth in a pocket, for half-time, and not a paper tissue that leaves lint.
• The external battery kept dry, and the cable pointing down so that water does not run into the connector.

Winter light

A match at three in the afternoon in December starts in full daylight and ends in the dusk, with a low sun in the middle. Two reflexes: stand with the sun at your back when the stand allows it, because backlight turns players into silhouettes, and lock the focus without locking the exposure, so that the image follows the drop in light. Under stadium lighting, the rules change and are explained in why my video stutters or flickers.

Set pieces need preparing

Scrums and lineouts are the moments forwards coaches want to review first, and the ones the wide shot shows least well. If a second phone is available, putting it in line with the lineout, about twenty metres away, framed tight on the line-up, gives what the wide shot cannot show: the throw, the jump, the support. For the scrum, the high wide shot is enough to see the push and the ball coming out.

What to look at next

The wide shot serves three readings: the defensive line (does it advance together, or does a player come out alone?), support for the ball carrier (who arrives first at the ruck, and how quickly?), and the set piece (lineouts won and lost, on which throw). One question at a time, as in every sport: the method is in analysing a match, and applies to rugby as it stands.