At first, it looked like an inspired move: picking a Game of Thrones theme for BBC Sport’s Six Nations rugby intro sequence.
However, the BBC has been forced into damage limitation mode after viewers spotted that one of the flags in the trailer – narrated by Jonathan Pryce – was wrong.
Rather than the green, white and red Italian tricolour, animators used the white, green and red stripes of Bulgaria.
The gaffe was pointed out by Italian media outlets, with La Repubblica running a blog on the issue.
YouTube commenters also spotted the error, with Edoardo Maria Elidoro saying: “Great spot, shame about getting the Italian flag wrong.” Giulio Marini wrote: “The Italian flag is wrong. What a shame, to what extent people who made that can be so ignorant?!”
BBC Sport moved quickly to correct the mistake, and told the Sun: “It was a brief error on a graphic which has been corrected.”
In any case, what the trailer describes as “England’s long time waiting, plotting, planning” seems to have paid off at the weekend , with relatively few of the promised “dragons” turning up for Wales.
