I’ll be watching Wales play the All Blacks for free on Welsh TV with English radio commentary – it works surprisingly well
Pictures from S4C and sound from BBC radio are a dream team for watching Wales’ Autumn Internationals.
Few fans of rival nations would envy the Welsh right now, but we do have one thing going for us that many other teams do not.
While most of the Autumn Internationals — now rebranded as the Quilter Nations Series – are hidden behind a TV paywall, all four of Wales’ November Tests are available for free across the UK via Welsh language broadcaster S4C and its S4C Clic streaming service. You can also watch through BBC iPlayer.
In an era when television rights sell for big money and even the Six Nations’ cherished free-to-air status has been under threat threat – thankfully, the famous old Championship’s terrestrial TV status has been secured until at least 2029 – this feels like a wonderful throwback to a more innocent time. Welsh speakers should be able to watch their national side in action with commentary in their preferred language, and it’s refreshing that ensuring a Welsh option is available overrides the usual commercial imperatives – even though Wales games are a hard watch at the moment,
Unfortunately, this creates a slight problem for me. Although I’ve supported Wales since I was knee-high to a prop forward and am a regular visitor to the Principality Stadium, I didn’t actually grow up in Wales. I therefore never learned Welsh.
I have relatives who are fluent, and I love listening to the language being spoken but… I simply don’t understand what’s being said. This makes listening to the inevitable debates about high tackles, groundings and sin bins a little tricky.
Luckily, I’ve stumbled on a brilliant solution that doesn’t cost me a penny.
Radio days
Although some Welsh games (such as this summer’s tour of Japan) do come with English commentary on S4C, that is not the case with the Quilter Nations Series. (I don’t begrudge this at all, by the way – TNT Sports have paid a lot of money for exclusive English-language rights, and their coverage is excellent.)
There are, however, excellent BBC radio commentaries available for many of the Autumn Internationals. So, as I watched Wales’ last-ditch victory over Japan on S4C, I was also listening to the action on BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra 2/BBC Radio Wales, using the BBC Sounds app on my iPhone.
The BBC’s radio coverage of major sporting events is uniformly excellent. Without pictures to fall back on, commentators and pundits paint a vivid picture of what’s happening on the field, while also supplying some all-important atmosphere. The team of Gareth Rhys Owen, Gareth Delve and James Hook perfectly captured the highs, lows and inevitable frustrations of a tense evening in Cardiff, adding some much-needed context to what was unfolding on screen.
Can Wales put in a performance worth watching against the All Blacks? (David Rogers/Getty Images)
Admittedly, there is a slight drawback to my commentary workaround. An inevitable consequence of digital broadcasting means is that all “live” TV and radio arrives on your device with a delay, so you should be prepared for audio and video to be slightly out of sync.
But this is not an insurmountable problem. By using distinctive moments in the match as markers (restarts, tries, kicks at goal etc), you can usually scrub the audio backwards or forwards so that the two sources match up – or at least get them so close that you’d never notice the difference.
I’m now a convert to the S4C/BBC Radio dream team, and will be sending this new line-up into action when Wales play New Zealand on Saturday. Though, of course, I may well regret my decision when the All Blacks are running in their 10th try of the afternoon…
How to watch and listen to Wales v New Zealand
Wales v New Zealand kicks off at 3.10pm on Saturday afternoon, and is available for free in the UK with Welsh commentary on S4C, S4C Clic and BBC iPlayer.
If you want to replicate my trick, tune into BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra or BBC Radio Wales on your radio – both are available through BBC Sounds, which is also a free service.
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