We’re four days into the rugby union World Cup, but it will be a lot longer, I hazard, before any of us can say with confidence that we fully understand what is going on in ITV’s credits sequence. So many questions. What, for instance, is that woman doing up a tree in her underwear? Who are those men in white underpants and why are they turning cartwheels? And what, in the name of Scott Quinnell’s battered ears, has any of this got to do with rugby?

Also, does that look like France to you, in the background of these strange, underdressed tumblings? To me it looks like Nevada after an atomic test. Either that, or the set for a truly unwatchable production of King Lear.

Sometimes one tires of seeing the Eiffel Tower sent out on the big sporting occasions to serve as a cover-all emblem of Frenchness. At the same time, there is only so much incomprehensible ballet in a post-apocalyptic landscape that viewers can take before they start pining for reassurance in the form of a shot of a Paris landmark or two, or even an old bloke in a stripy jumper with onions around his neck. Help us out here, ITV.

In all other respects, the coverage has been a model of clarity: a few words of introduction from Jim Rosenthal or Martin Bayfield, 80 minutes of rugby of some description and then some concluding remarks from a series of former players. No ballet anywhere and everyone in the studio keeps their clothes on. Simple.

We take it, by the way, that we can blame the host broadcaster, rather than ITV, for the cockup in which the camera panned the faces of the Samoa team during the South African national anthem. Unsurprisingly, not one of those Samoans was singing along and nor did the biggest member of their team and/or the one with the most masking tape holding the top of his head on step forward to fill the role of token blubber – a contractual requirement now in pre-match anthem singing, at least when the camera is pointing the right way.

Incidentally, the best in class so far in this category are Portugal, whose token blubber suffered a patriotic agony so broad that it appeared to be commensurate with having his feet run over slowly by a lorry. Moreover, the whole team were practically pogoing by the anthem’s end. Mesmerising. And to think that this is only the pool stage.

Point no fingers at ITV, either, for the abysmal sound quality during Wales versus Canada, when the noise from the stadium was all but inaudible and Bob Symonds and Will Greenwood seemed to be speaking to us bound and gagged from a cupboard. Then again, this match was being shown on ITV4, one of broadcasting’s most remote and ice-blasted outposts, so some kind of breakdown in quality was perhaps inevitable.

In the normal run of things, when there isn’t a World Cup on, few viewers ever pass this way and anyone setting out for ITV4 for the first time should be warned that it’s a long way by foot. Turn left at Living and continue past UK Gold and you’ll see it eventually, away to the right. Another warning: buses, this far out, late at night, are almost non-existent, so be prepared to hitch, or, alternatively, arrange a stopover at Bid TV.

ITV’s sole concession to showmanship at this stage of the tournament is the level of access it offers to the England camp. In this respect, the broadcaster appears to have its own peg in the dressing-room and quite likely its own postmatch Lucozade bottle. Thus, after the underwhelming opener against the United States, we went behind the scenes to hear the postmatch debriefing from Brian Ashton, the head coach. He had almost nothing to say, of course, but the silence of the players, as if they had just suffered a crushing defeat, spoke loudly.

Later, we were even able to join England on board their train home, where one delinquent member of the squad (we’re not interested in naming and shaming him here) clearly had his stockinged feet on the seat. Do that on Merseyrail these days and you end up in court and all over the newspapers.

Ashton should have a word because it’s one thing to lose players to injury and citation, quite another to lose them to unnecessary legal cases arising from violations of etiquette on public transport.

South Africa, England’s next opponents, are, we note, one of a number of teams experimenting with smaller than usual numerals on the back of their shirts. We assume the strategy has been borrowed from Hollywood, where the set-builders for the classic Westerns of yore would frequently build the doors low and narrow to make the cowboys look bigger. On present form, lining up against England can be relied on to produce a similar illusion.