Strictly Come Dancing professional Neil Jones has publicly defended Cach Mercer after his first performance in the competition received a mixed response from the judges.
The BBC One dance contest officially began on Saturday, September 26, with the first live show of the series, where the latest batch of celebrities performed on the dancefloor with their professional partners for the first time.
The episode opened with a routine by the Strictly professionals to an orchestral version of Joy by Raye, with presenting trio Josh, Emma Willis and Johannes Radebe joining the dance at the end before introducing the couples.
Leaderboard leaders and tough scores
Social media star John Nellis topped the first Strictly leaderboard of the 2026 series. The Northern Irish football content creator and his partner Katya Jones impressed the judges with a foxtrot to Alex Warren's Ordinary, scoring 31 points out of a possible 40 from Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke.
Former Love Island winner Dani Dyer-Bowen made her Strictly debut with Nikita Kuzmin after pulling out last year due to injury, scoring 22 points for her samba to Lush Life.
Former Love Island winner Cach had a trickier night, performing the quickstep to I Just Might by Bruno Mars with his professional partner Maddie Ingoldsby, who is also new to the series.
Judges divided over freestyle moves
Cach, a professional freestyle dancer specialising in hip-hop and Afrobeats, incorporated some freestyle moves into the routine, which divided the judging panel. Craig said: "Too much freestyle for me. You are a great freestyle dancer, that is a fact, we don't need to see that here in a quickstep. The whole point of this is you are learning a new genre of dance."
He added: "I am finding it really difficult to judge that. I am going to judge what quickstep he did. The posture wasn't great, the frame wasn't great. I am sorry." Motsi Mabuse offered a more positive view, saying: "I understand what Craig is saying, but dance is about music and music lives in your body and that was genius."
The couple scored 20, with a 3 from Craig, a 6 from Motsi, a 5 from Shirley and a 6 from Anton. Fans were quick to support Cach, noting he was not responsible for the choreography.
Neil Jones shows support
Neil Jones has now shown his support. After former Strictly champion Oti Mabuse cast her verdicts on the opening routines in a social media series with her husband Marius Ipure, Neil replied to their comments on Cach and Maddie on TikTok: "For me it was the dance of the night and really should have been top of the leaderboard."
Oti had captioned the clip of her and Marius' review: "Marius paused Cach and Maddie's Quickstep and said, 'Hang on…' [eyes and crying laughing face emojis]. We loved the energy, but the big question is: was there enough Quickstep? Strictly fans, settle this one for us."
