Sonja McLaughlan interviewed Welsh rugby’s interim CEO Nigel Walker in a Today programme sort of tone. It would not be BBC Sport without an earnest pre-match jeremiad about an -ism or two everyone involved said all the sensible things, and then Davies and Sam Warburton reassured viewers that there wouldn’t be any more sort of that nonsense on Ieuan Evans’s watch, because Ieuan is a solid chap.

Well played, and then the BBC was onto covering the recent shocking revelations that some sexist old blokes have been involved in running rugby, specifically on this occasion Welsh rugby. Then I finish playing and go in the commentary box with him and that was one of the most nerve-racking things I did post-career: a commentary with Eddie Butler.

Warburton said that he grew up listening to Butler “in the noughties” and “then when I was playing, watching the games back and there’s Eddie’s voice commentating on you, it is quite a surreal thing. There was also a fitting reminder of just why broadcasters like Butler come to mean so much: their longevity. Richie Benaud knew it, as all the best ones have done. And then when he spoke he brought the pictures to life.” He loved the pause, to let the pictures do the talking. His longtime comrade Jonathan Davies summed up nicely what separates the decent sports broadcasters from the excellent ones: “The hand would come across in your face, and I understood what that meant when that came. Like Elvis and Tupac, there’s no reason to suppose that merely being dead will detract from Eddie’s ability to keep having hits, and with decades of archive material for TV directors to call up on, it is comforting to know that we have surely not heard the last of his sonorous poetic scene-setters. The BBC paid its respects to Eddie Butler with a montage about the glory of the Six Nations voiced by, er, Eddie Butler. Both began with important tributes to two major figures – Eddie Butler on the Beeb, Doddie Weir on ITV – but the differences between the channels’ coverage are as noticeable now as the similarities. A Six Nations television duel on Saturday, with the BBC showing Wales v Ireland before ITV’s broadcast of England v Scotland.

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