The whole product is crap at the moment - outside of Peacock and Rushton, the on air ‘talent’ is terrible.
The whole product is crap at the moment - outside of Peacock and Rushton, the on air ‘talent’ is terrible.
Harper was always an excellent host, asked good questions of a panel and kept the discussion moving, it’s just a shame that job has been Tara’s or Adam’s for years now and that Andy is pretty terrible at everything else they ask him to do instead.
It’s also a shame the best analysts in Rudan & Scott Miller obviously both now have coaching gigs and have moved on. I enjoy Oggy & Bruce Djite has been absolutely brilliant of late… he’s brutally honest with his opinions yet also articulate enough to state his reasoning.
They need to replace, in order: Archie, Bozza, Nick Meredith, Speed, Slater, Kossie.
As long as they can just cut to Bozza for anything to do with keeping. That’s the only place he really adds some value.
I don’t really have an issue with Kossie.
Speed, Slater and Meredith need to become a specialised group who only do Fury v Gold Coast games thou.
The panel shows I’m not overly fussed by because I don’t spend a lot of time with. That may be because they’re crap thou.
The problem with the colour commentators they’re using (Meredith, Harper, Slater, Bozza etc.) is that they all stopped playing professionally 20+ years ago, some from careers that never reached any great heights, and haven’t done their badges and/or failed as coaches so it’s no wonder that they’re not up to date on the current LOTG, coaching methods and tactics.
The ABC coverage has Jade North, Damian Mori, Chris Coyne & Simon Colosimo (before he took up his role with FIFPro) who, like Scott Miller & Daniel McBreen at Fox, are all recently retired and/or currently coaching. Their commentary & analysis is far superior to that of Paul Wade who would seamlessly slot in to a role on the Fox panel.
Fox should also get a recently retired referee (Mark Shield, Matthew Breeze, Strebre Delovski?) to sit on the panel much the same as BeIn does with Howard Webb and ESPN do for their NFL coverage.
I just listened to A-League Live coverage on ABC digi radio in the car, was the Newcastle v Adelaide game with the ABC Newcastle team and the commentator was superb! Aaron Carney was his name and he was fantastic. Probly does all the Knights games up there as well I guess but gee he was good. A breath of fresh air really.
Generally the ABC commentary is pretty good, it’s how I’ve taken in most games this season. I also don’t mind the unashamed bias of the local commentators.
For the people who find the bias of the Kiwi commentators on Fox to be over the top then I strongly advise them not to listen to the ABC commentary. The continual use of “we” when addressing the home team and Adam Kwasnik sounding more spectator than commentator may offend.
The problem I find with a lot of the referees on panels is the ex-players they have on just seem to want to argue with the referee like they are still playing.
I’ve never seen a referee go on TV and tell a player they were shit because of a missed shot.
I still attribute a lot of the A League ratings drop off to Fox Sports losing the EPL rights to Optus, as well as poor marketing. A lot of the guys in my football team are dire hard EPL fans. They have an interest in the A League, but once Fox Sports lost the EPL rights, they disconnected and signed up with Optus sport. Whereas they used to watch the occasional game, they don’t anymore.
I mentioned to a couple of the guys that they could watch the free-to-air coverage on Saturday nights and they didn’t even know that it was on, and who could blame them? - when have you ever seen an ad for the A League outside of watching an A League game on Fox?
True although I think that also comes down to who they’re using & this video is a good example.
Howard Webb, although he clearly articulates his point, has the personality of a policeman giving a press conference and Robbie Savage is the Welsh Bozza.
Replace Webb with Pierluigi Collina, Mark Clattenburg or Mike Dean & remove Savage completely and it’s quite a good segment.
Doesnt look like the old TV rights thread made its way across so this seems as good a place as any
Was just about to post this. Encouraging development. Good to see anyone interested with the current ratings as they are.
For sure. No wonder Ten aren’t invested in promoting games at the moment if they’re not earning any advertising revenue from this. Crazy situation!
Keep the price down for themselves too
This would be just the boost the game needs.
Would be huge bit of positivity for the game. Hope it comes it fruition.
For the first time ever I am torn on FTA. FFA are making the right noises on further expansion (Canberra, Team 11 (SE Melb) and Brisbane 2 seem when not if) and we will get a lot of attention with the 2 new clubs in Sydney and Melbourne. Possibly might be better served with consistent revenue stream from Foxtel and using the new clubs to get more attention and buzz around the game? Not sure. First time I’ve felt like this since 2005, FTA has always been the holy grail.
I’m just rewatching our game against Brisbane. I know it’s been said a million times but the commentary by Speed and Harper is total amateur hour. Some of the shit Speed comes out with is just embarrassing. Really has a negative impact on Foxtels production and something they really need to update and refresh
Speed obviously does a hell of a lot of research and I will credit him with that skill, as well as being good at conveying excitement appropriately in the most exciting moments (goals, close chances). However, he needs to know when to apply the facts and he’s really not very good at it. The better British commentators know how to insert statistics and facts at appropriate times, not talk about who’s going to score the 5000th league goal 24 times in a single game.
When Speed is on and rolling off statistics like they’re off a production line, sometimes I almost wish Paul Wade came back into the commentary box. That’s how fucked it is.
He’s not that bad.