Rugby TV Shows

[Hugh Jarse]

Episode 1 of Rughy HQ starts in 3 minutes on Fox 1.

The blurb says Greg Martin and Fox Sports' newest signing Nathan Sharpe join Nick McArdle in rugby's premier weekly show "Rugby HQ. FullAussie conference previews, plus Quade Cooper and ARU CEO Servo Pulveriser join us.

Sounds good, apart from the Greg Martin bit, and the 11:00pm -12:00pm timeslot.

 

[ChargerWA]

Wow, that show has some serious multiple personality issues.

They start with a panel style show, turn up the serious factor by all standing around the big screen and then slip in Canno doing a random pie gag???

On the positive side the fox field looks like it may be better utilized this year and the top 5 with Maloney has promise.The interaction with the NH commentators before the Lions is a clever move if they can take away some of the awkwardness of a segment that felt like a couple of Poms talking at us, not to us and lastly the promise to have more interaction with the NZ and SA commentators is always welcome to hear what the enemy is thinking.

All up they have addressed a lot of the issues we complained about last year.

 

[p.Tah]

^ i agree, but that Cannonball segment better go. That was absolutely pointless.

 

[kronic]

Would prefer if the program took a much more serious edge. The World Game on SBS is the bench mark for how a weekly sports program should be run IMO.

Shouldn't of bothered with the Pulver "interview". It's was simply a cross, without any hard hitting questions, nothing that we didn't already know.

 

[wamberal]

Would prefer if the program took a much more serious edge. The World Game on SBS is the bench mark for how a weekly sports program should be run IMO.

Shouldn't of bothered with the Pulver "interview". It's was simply a cross, without any hard hitting questions, nothing that we didn't already know.

I disagree with your point about the Pulver interview. Not all viewers are equally up-to-date, don't forget. For some viewers, that would have been the first time to see him, and the fact that he comes across as a pretty normal, approachable, sort of fellow is important.

Plus I don't think it hurts for him to remind us all that he has visited all the major stakeholders in his first couple of weeks.

 

[terry j]

hooray for dropping those stupid bloody segments like piggies and princess blah blah blah. So wtf was that stupid bit with a pie?

I don't want a fluff entertainment show, give me an information show.

So big thumbs up if they bring back the roundup from the ABs and SA perspective, and smart move to start stirring the lions pot. (oh, that reminds me, who needs fluff like 'did he tell the truth then or not'.

SIT DOWN guys, I get you want to differentiate yourselves, but don't at the same time look asinine.

All up I'd say it looks promising, esp compared to the woeful; last few years.

 

[terry j]

this might be a bit weird...how do I start a new thread??? I can answer (obviously!) but for the life of me I cannot see a 'start new thread' button anywhere. And, even weirder, I have started threads in the past.

In fact, if I look at the forum pages I have a message 'you do not have enough privileges to post' or somesuch, which again is wacky as here I am posting.

Kinda embarressing to have to ask you know! And I will prob find the button as soon as I hit send. That's usually the way.

edit, this is the message I see

(You have insufficient privileges to post here.)

 

[boyo]

this might be a bit weird.how do I start a new thread??? I can answer (obviously!) but for the life of me I cannot see a 'start new thread' button anywhere. And, even weirder, I have started threads in the past.

In fact, if I look at the forum pages I have a message 'you do not have enough privileges to post' or somesuch, which again is wacky as here I am posting.

Kinda embarressing to have to ask you know! And I will prob find the button as soon as I hit send. That's usually the way.

edit, this is the message I see

(You have insufficient privileges to post here.)

Try the "Suggested threads" thing.

 

[Ruggo]

That Rugby HQ sucked. Did Sharpie feel violated having so many heads up his arse? They stopped just short of rolling out a red carpet and kissing his feet. It was boring and the content was just shit. Watching that after watching total rugby was depressing.

Time they got serious on exploring the elements of rugby on and off the field with some smarts rather than cheap humor lacking in humor.

 

[wamberal]

That Rugby HQ sucked. Did Sharpie feel violated having so many heads up his arse? They stopped just short of rolling out a red carpet and kissing his feet. It was boring and the content was just shit. Watching that after watching total rugby was depressing.

Time they got serious on exploring the elements of rugby on and off the field with some smarts rather than cheap humor lacking in humor.

You wish. So do I. However, Australia is not good at sporting journalism generally, and rugby is a niche sport here, so cheap humour is appropriate, unfortunately. The audience is small (so being cheap is important) and the game is not particularly attractive (so humour is important).

 

[boyo]

That Rugby HQ sucked. Did Sharpie feel violated having so many heads up his arse? They stopped just short of rolling out a red carpet and kissing his feet. It was boring and the content was just shit. Watching that after watching total rugby was depressing.

Time they got serious on exploring the elements of rugby on and off the field with some smarts rather than cheap humor lacking in humor.

A la "The Footy Show".

 

[former]

just an interesting side bar... A NSW board member was at a function today and was overheard saying NSW rugby will be taking back community rugby from aru. You can change the building but if the management stay the same, nothing really changes.

 

[Ruggo]

You wish. So do I. However, Australia is not good at sporting journalism generally, and rugby is a niche sport here, so cheap humour is appropriate, unfortunately. The audience is small (so being cheap is important) and the game is not particularly attractive (so humour is important).

Sure but are they attracting new viewers or just making the niche diehard rugby folk vomit and change channel.

 

[Brumby Runner]

Hoping the show improves when they have matches to report on as well as analysing and predicting the coming week's matches. They must lose the pie segment. Juvenile and pointless. Needs to take a more serious approach with the Shaun Maloney segments the only humour. Could learn a lot from the approach of Total Rugby with real rugby stories.

 

[terry j]

Try the "Suggested threads" thing.

Yep, there it is, hiding!

ta

Agree with the recent posts. The topic/thing that is 'interesting' for the viewers is RUGBY. When you take away the rugby content, then the producers are left with a conundrum, 'how do we make the show interesting?' Unfortunately they come up with the wrong answer, 'the presenters have to be 'interesting''. They miss the obvious answer of inserting rugby content and end up with the presenters acting as fools.

I used to love 'crossing the ditch' and getting the talk from an NZ perspective, and then to SA to get the SA perspective. When they ditched that and replaced it with, of all things, silly little competitions between a forward and a back, I mean how trivial can you get?

And by doing that the show became unbelievably aussiecentric. I mean it is all well and good to have 'once were wallabies', interesting to get (or remember) the historical background, but why does it ONLY have to be ex wallabies? Why not just 'great rugby players from the past that it is well worth remembering their contributions to the game'? No, ditch any view of the game from elsewhere and ONLY look at it from our perspective.

It's bad enough that rugby is so marginalised on foxsports (and the ONLY reason I spend the coin for paytv IS the rugby...you seen the crap that passes for entertainment on all the other channels? AND you gotta sit thru frickin ads anyway? AND the majority of those bloody ads are for OTHER programs to be seen on foxtel!, in which of you watch them will contain other ads for other shows!) but to then get fluff in what is supposed to be a show about rugby just rubs salt into the wounds.

I wondered what he meant when he said 'we ditched some stuff because of feedback we received..' Does that mean they read threads like this? Or alternatively people emailed them??

Dunno how much weight a forum like this would carry with them, it would have to have SOME weight tho-some sort of big fish in the small pond of rugby in australia?, but hey maybe a green and gold official critique could be sent to them. Titled 'get rid of the fluff and give us meat'.

Is there anyone who get's to see the comparable shows in NZ and SA? If so, what are the relative strengths and weaknesses of each?

Are these similar shows able to be streamed?

 

[barbarian]

I thought it was pretty good, agree with others who said that it is always hard when you don't have many games to analyse (both past and upcoming).

The pie section was fine, only went for about 30 seconds.

Some of you need to lighten up a bit!
.

 

[Athilnaur]

I thought the standing thing was absurd, Cannon's pie in the face segment asinine, and Kafe the weatherman awful.

 

[boyo]

The pie section was fine, only went for about 30 seconds.

Some of you need to lighten up a bit!
.

It would be a shame if Inside Rugby/The Rugby Club/Rugby HQ turned into a version of The Footy Show. Everything doesn't have to play to the lowest common denominator.

 

[KevinO]

Complete rubbish of a show last week, amazing the difference between the Sky Sports Rugby Club and the Australian. The segment on the Lions tour seemed that the Wallabies would be playing England in June, maybe get more than 2 poms on board so people actually know who is in contention for the tour.

 

[Nelse]

I don't think people should be too worried about the pie segment (or cake or whatever it was). Don't forget of the things they have to fit in. Match previews of all the games (this week it was 2), Match reviews (this week was only brief trials, next week will be 2 but then we will be getting 7) and across the ditch and RSA updates, including interviews, Sean Maloney, Kafe Chalkboard etc. So hopefully, that will force them to throw the pie segment away.