Brendan Venter interview powers into global YouTube chart top five

The bizarre, hilarious interview that Saracens rugby coach Brendan Venter gave to veteran commentator Martin Gillingham following his side’s defeat on the weekend has become a worldwide smash hit.

A look at the YouTube charts, which rank the most watched videos from around the world, reveals that the 60″-clip is ranked 4th, 7th, 15th and 19th in the Tuesday’s global Top 20. (Note from ed: The clip kept powering up the rankings, by Wednesday occupying places 2, 5, 10, 20)

The fact that the video features a number of times reflects the fact that there are different iterations which have been uploaded onto YouTube. Rough calculations indicate that the video has been watched over 200 000 times in total.

Venter’s team had just been beaten 21-24 by Racing Metro when Venter lined up to do the traditional post-game interview. Just two weeks earlier, the coach had been fined R250 000 “by the European Rugby Cup officials for [comments] suggesting they had not prepared their referees sufficiently for interpreting the new breakdown laws”.

Saracens CEO Edward Griffiths was in on the plan as well, confessing that “the idea had come to Venter when the team were travelling on to Gloucester and had watched the movie Mike Bassett: England Manager on the bus“.

You can also watch the following clip, which has been intercut with footage from the movie to get a sense of how good Venter’s performance actually was.