Last night’s coverage of the RWC from Channel 9 was nothing short of disgraceful. The NZ Tonga game was delayed 3 hours to cater for an obscure NRL finals match, which could not even fill the Sydney Football Stadium. There was no coverage of the opening ceremony and when the game was finally broadcast it was inundated and interrupted with advertisements, the length of which would seem to challenge current regulations. It seemed the number and length of the ad breaks were designed to turn viewers off the game.
Channel 9′s decision not to show the RWC live on one of its alternative channels speaks volumes of 9′s desire to kill the RWC in Australia to protect the NRL. It also does not say too much of the ARU’s decision to let 9 have the free to air broadcast rights.
Tonight is England vs Argentina, a delayed broadcast at 10:30pm after two NRL finals. Once again 9 is not going to broadcast the game on any of its alternative channels. The situation is farcical.
UPDATE
All the games so far have been pretty competitive. Even the Namibians gave a good showing for themselves against Fiji with a couple of tries, although they let themselves down in the final 5 minutes. In fact that seems to be the main problem with the weaker sides, they struggle in the final minutes of the game. Tonga had a great second half against NZ, or more to the point Taumalolo had a great game when he came on. He single handily destroyed the NZ scrum.
UPDATE II
Noticed that the stadium for the NRL games on Channel 9 last night were basically empty.
UPDATE III
Watching Channel 9, we just got a dose of sports betting odds for the Australia Italy game. Basically a paid ad dressed up as some type of informed commentary – an info commercial. For Channel 9 some things never change. They can’t help themselves.
UPDATE IV
More Channel 9 programming skulduggery. The Australia Ireland game will not be shown live, instead Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, The Antiques Roadshow and something called Mighty Joe Young will take precedence. All to protect the NRL and their empty stadium games.
Been running the numbers on the NRL final and RWC games. On average, the points difference between NRL final games has so far been 21, but at the RWC it has only been 17 points. That is more remarkable given that the RWC awards more points to the attacking team than NRL. This seems to indicate that the RWC has so far been more competitive than the NRL finals, and that the minnows are slowly catching up to the bigger countries. Having said that the USA now has more registered rugby players than Australia, and with the re-admission of Rugby into the Olympics player numbers around the world will only grow along with the competition.
BTW, there are technical issues at my place which stop me from getting Foxtel, so I can’t comment on the Foxtel experience. I hear it is pretty good.
UPDATE V
No terrorists at the RWC.
NRL chief executive David Gallop has been forced to apologise after using a terrorist analogy to describe the Melbourne fans who booed him on the weekend.
UPDATE VI
Australia and the USA now have more senior male rugby players than NZ.
