There is an old story about a rugby correspondent at a local paper who began his report of a particularly dull game by giving the score and mentioning there were a couple of hundred people at the match, then went on to list them all by name until he had filled the space on the page.
Sadly, there were so few people here on Saturday that it would be a struggle to make it halfway down this particular page if we tried it again.
Yes, it is a privilege to watch any sort of live sport right now, but if you’re feeling excluded take comfort in the undeniable truth that there are certain advantages to watching it at home, too.
Like the fact you can just take a quick flick over to see what is happening on another channel.
England v Georgia on a freezing cold and sopping wet afternoon was always going to be heavy going, but the lack of a crowd feels is a real problem for international rugby. More of a problem, for sure, than it is for some other sports being played behind closed doors. The atmosphere of an international match is half the fun and when they are taking place in an empty stadium mismatched games such as the two England have played this autumn feel flat and bloodless. If nothing else, the pandemic should be a reminder to the people who run rugby not to take for granted the support of the people who pay to watch it live.
Without them, this game was little more than a glorified training session, which is exactly what England’s last couple of matches against Georgia have been. Eddie Jones has invited them over to pack down against his forwards for practice a couple of times in the past few years. Last time they did it, in February 2019, the scrummaging session got so hot that it boiled over into a brawl.
It was way too cold for anything like that to happen this time. It was Baltic out and the rain got so heavy in the second half that you could hear the drips drumming on Twickenham’s corrugated roof. Which pretty much did for the idea that England would play in a more expansive way as the game wore on.
Still, if you were a connoisseur of set-piece play, someone who really relishes a slow-mo replay of a rolling maul or savours the intricacies of scrummaging then there was plenty for you to get stuck into. There were 31 lineouts and 18 scrums. And six tries, which at least meant there were regular opportunities for everyone to warm their hands on the flamethrowers they let off in celebration on the touchlines whenever someone scored.
England were everything Jones wanted them to be, ruthless, relentless and disciplined. They did not even give Georgia a chance to take a kick a goal.
That said, given the way England play these days, supporting them against an underdog team is a bit like cheering for the Death Star as it hoves into view above some hapless little planet. Their entry music might as well be the Imperial March from Star Wars. It was an 80-minute demonstration of inexorable force, like a military parade of high-grade weaponry. Especially when Jones started to bring on his replacements. Kyle Sinckler and Mako Vunipola are a hell of a pair to send out when you are 26 points up and there are 30 minutes to play.
For Georgia, it was like watching a man try to hold up a falling wardrobe. You knew he was going to be crushed at some point, the question was how long it was going to take. Well, they held on for the opening 15 minutes, then England scored four tries in the next 25. Elliot Daly’s was the only one of them that involved more than a single pass.
By half-time, Georgia had spent 10 seconds inside the English 22, just long enough for them to be immediately booted back out again.
In the second half, when the weather was at its worst, England scored two more, a third for Jamie George off a maul and the other a cute little finish by Dan Robson.
Again, Georgia made exactly one visit into the English 22. This one lasted all of 29 seconds, long enough for them to lose a scrum. They had a chance to try for a last pushover try right at the end, but flubbed the kick to touch.