3D Rugby

Ben Fenton wrote for Wednesday's Financial Times a story about his experiment in 3D -- watching a rugby match. I don't know anything about rugby but I thought this was a nice piece of writing, and I will share it with you in that spirit.

"It must be decades since a London cinema audience stood for the national anthem. But then, watching one of the sport's most visceral encounters live on a big screen, with a beer in one hand, in 3D to boot, prompted several odd experiences.

"Few though were much to do with a third dimension. Dramatic moments of perspective -- explosions in space that send debris over your left shoulder -- don't happen in rugby, thankfully; they are fodder for Imax technology. Drama on the rugby field is more about depth, and England versus Wales had plenty of that -- if only depth of ordure as two poor teams battled to be the least incompetent."

I like the use of "ordure," a word for manure more often used, I'm sure, on his side of the Atlantic than on this one -- but of course so is the word "rugby"! Ordure also suggests "odor," both as a homonym and because of the rather intense relationship of the meaning of the two words.

Ialso like the play on the word "depth," as a feature of a visual field (the third of those Ds) and as a sport's team's attribute, i.e. the "depth" of talent. Yet other meanings of the multi-faceted term "depth" lie about and complicate our reaction to this passage.

Good work, Mr. Fenton.