Rugby update
My colleague Carl Hicks has covered most of the pitch in his blog a couple of days back, but I simply wanted to respond to some questions from viewers about why we didn't have England v Argentina live on 91Èȱ¬ television yesterday...
It's part of the regular pattern of the rugby year. We have all - a change from a few years back when Sky had the England games at Twickenham. But in the autumn internationals we have the Celtic nations live while Sky have England, so the two forthcoming England v South Africa games will also be on Sky.
Why then did we have England v New Zealand last weekend? Because that was an extra fixture outside the normal autumn schedule, and also wanted to make a special event out of the opening of the new South Stand.
Two quick further notes: the England games are shown in extended highlights on 91Èȱ¬ Three on a Saturday night at 7pm and often again in Sunday Grandstand. And addressing one of the points made earlier in this blog about football - this is an example of the 91Èȱ¬ prioritising the non-English nations of the UK. By being on terrestrial television they gain much bigger audiences too: provisional figures suggest England v Argentina averaged around 0.3m viewers on Sky while Wales v Pacific Islands averaged 2.0m on 91Èȱ¬ One.
And I won't get into the argument about whether it's better not to watch England the way they played yesterday...
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It’s a sorry state of affairs when the RFU wanting some publicity about opening a new stand factors into what games the 91Èȱ¬ covers, but that’s not why I’m commenting - with sky seemingly pulling all the strings isn’t about time the 91Èȱ¬ threw in the towel and stopped attempting to cover major sports and concentrated on the minority ones the private sector aren’t bothered about?
Oh since I’m here, where has the calendar allowing people to find old blogs by the sports editors gone?
Dear Jenny
We were attracted to the All Blacks taking on England more than the new stand - excellent though it is.
And no - we're not going to abandon major sports to pay television.
Why were we not shown hi-lights of the France/ NZ game on Grandstand Sun 12th ?. Eng /Arg did not merit monopolising the programme irresp of the fact that it had not been televised live by the 91Èȱ¬.
Your coverage confirmed an England -centric culture prevails at the 91Èȱ¬.
60 mins of rugby hi-lights was advertised ... we only got 45 mins because we lost 15 mins watching gymnastics . Then the editing was such that the amount of actual rugby we saw was diddly squat.Opening up with hi-lights from last weeks NZ game was a total irrelevency . Preperation of,and taking,penalties and conversions are equaly irrelevent. . We already know the score ,and in all probability we have read a match report , what we want is to see the game.
Raise your game .. and get more balance into the content
rgds
robert trythall
Sorry, Robert, I cannot agree with you. Since when has live coverage of the Celtic nations on Saturday and highlights of England added up to being England-centric? The fact is (and am sure Roger Mosey will tell me if I am wrong) we probably have more live international rugby on 91Èȱ¬tv at present than at any point, possibly ever. Whichever team we support it has to be said that England's lamentable form is a major news story in world rugby and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing what Austin, Brian and John made of it during the highlights package on Grandstand all having had time to reflect 24 hours after the event.
And as for the gymnastics - I have watched GB perform pretty woefully at times for most of my life, so what a joy to see us competing at the highest level and coming away with medals. Worth every one of those extra 15 minutes I'd have thought. Perhaps Beth could liven up SPOTY by teaching Gary Lineker a few moves?
Regards,
Gary
Why not change 91Èȱ¬ to EBC - English Broadcasting Corporation. Coverage of Ireland's great win reduced to three tries. Rugby segmenbt almost entirely centred on England. Absolutely disgraceful. Fair play for other countries.
I'm not sure what Jim McCarthy was doing on Saturday evening, but the Ireland v South Africa game was shown live then on 91Èȱ¬2.
Jenny,
We removed the calendar because users told us it was not a particularly useful form of navigation. Instead, we have now expanded the 'categories' section to the right-hand side (eg rubgy, cricket, match of the day, sports personality of the year etc), as all our user testing tells us readers are far more likely to navigate by sport/topic than by day.
The main page displays the last 15 posts which means people can still follow the archive chronologically to a degree.
We will be expanding the topics and adding some 'frequently asked questions' (and answers) to address some of the more regular feedback themes.
Thanks
Claire
Have to agree with those that complained about the over coverage of the england game. I was out on saturday watching live games so on sunday I expect (as was advertised)highlights of the Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England games. Having 3 englishmen talking on and on and on about englands performance (even making reference to england during the ireland highlights) was not a fair representation of the weekends rugby highlights.
I was very dissapointed by the rugby coverage on Sunday Grandstand. What was on was great, a justified amount of time for the England highlights which had not been shown before on terrestrial television and the studio discussion also.
But it was advertised as a rugby round-up, even at the start of the programme and I was wanting to see highlights of the other home nations particularly Scotland to hear John Beattie's commentary on his son's first try for the country.
I know the schedules were running late and the gynmastics overan but it was scheduled too short anyway. 1 hour was never enough time to show highlights of the 4 internationals. I know there are live matches coming up the next two Sundays so it will be slightly different but please schedule longer time for the rugby highlights in the future.
I don't know why Sunday Grandstand started so late anyway.
David is incorrect when referring to Sunday Grandstand he states that England highlights had not been shown before on terrestial television. 91Èȱ¬ THREE covered extensive highlights of England vs Argentina on Saturday evening and this station is available to DTT viewers via Freeview!
Hi,
In answer to those criticising the fact we only showed the England highlights on Sunday Grandstand...
Basically, it was our intention to run highlights from the Wales, Scotland and Ireland games but circumstances beyond our control meant we were running behind schedule.
Remembrance Sunday overran by 15 minutes on 91Èȱ¬ One, which meant the second part of the Eastenders Omnibus on 91Èȱ¬ Two couldn't start until the first part had finished on 91Èȱ¬ One!
Therefore our programme time was trimmed and we were only able to show England's match in detail.
This decision was taken as we had already shown Wales', Scotland's and Ireland's matches live the previous day.
Sorry if your enjoyment of our coverage was affected.
Claire: Didn't Sunday Grandstand only start 5 minutes late?
D Howard Gilpin - I'm sorry but my understanding of the phrase terrestrial television was 91Èȱ¬1, 91Èȱ¬2, ITV1, C4 and C5.
Even if I am wrong I'm sure everyone could see my point - the England highlights had not been shown on any of these channels before whereas Wales and Ireland were live on Saturday with scottish highlights at the end of the Irish game - so the coverage given to England on Sunday Grandstand was fair.
The 91Èȱ¬ should have scheduled longer for the rugby round-up or dropped something else from the schedule.
It is my understanding that a programme schedule for 1 hour was cut to 45 minutes. Therefore to save the 15 minutes , the 91Èȱ¬ cut the coverage of the Wales and Scotland game completely and showed 3 Irish tries. Thus allowing 42 minutes to cover England highlights and discussion of the England game. This decision was made all the easier as the studio "experts" were all English to start with.
Ronnie Cowan
My only comment is about your coverage of the games for which you do have the rights.
I'm frequently frustrated at how much of the time we don't get to see the game because the umpteenth replay is being shown or the play moves on quickly and the director doesn't respond quickly enough. It seems to be a much bigger problem on your rugby coverage than football. I'm not suggesting you abandon replays, because they can be very informative, but please reduce the number you use. There's plenty of time during half-time if necessary. On the last couple of games on the 91Èȱ¬ I'm sure we've effectively missed a couple of tries because of replays or off the ball shots.
The other question is why do you have so many pundits? I think I counted six at the last game. Surely three is more than enough. Most of them don't have anything orignal to say anyway.
Id much rather see the celtic nations play than England so as long as SKy dont get the celtic matches, I dont care who gets englands
Changing topic slighty but still on rugb. I've noticed on the Grandstand pages of the 91Èȱ¬ Sport website that you will be showing coverage from the IRB 7's series in December.
Could you tell me about your coverage and commentator plans please?
sir ,
Can u assure all rugby aficianados that this w/end Rugby Grandstand will
show extensive highlights of the Fr/NZ game(s).
The autumn series is foreplay for the World cup.Your coverage to date has excluded the main event.
Thanks in advance
Perhaps the 91Èȱ¬ should just regionalise its output to reflect the interest of the majority? The vast majority of the UK is English, and they will want to watch England and discuss England (it's called maths). If the Celts want to watch their teams, let them - in their regions. Ireland isn't in the UK anyway, so the 91Èȱ¬ has no need to show them anymore than France or Italy.
What about all the Irish and Scottish people in Britain. And besides, statistics don't lie - England v Argentina averaged around 0.3m viewers on Sky while Wales v Pacific Islands averaged 2.0m on 91Èȱ¬ One.
Also, would you really rather have watched the dross that was Eng v Argentina than Wales v Scotland or Ireland v South Africa - both of which had real attacking rugby.
About 100 years ago, when I was a young journalist, England played in black and white, or so it seemed to me. They always lost, especially to Wales, despite being touted as (what was then) Five Nations champions. I was eight when England first won the Five Nations in my lifetime and 25 when they repeated the effort. Later, as I grew older and knew I would never emulate my boyhood team-mate Maurice Colclough, England started to play better, probably because they took a bunch of amateurs to the 1987 World Cup and came back thoroughly chastened by the experience. I've lived through the Carling era (God help me) and the World Cup victory of 2003. And you know what? Every few years England go off the boil, come back again and go off again. There was even a time a few years ago when the All-Blacks got beaten fairly regularly. So before sacking Andy Robinson or any of the other seven million coaches, shrinks, players, fitness gurus, dieticians, Rob Andrew or whomever, remember this: England will bounce back. They will win again. They will beat France as easily as they used to. They will do whatever is necessary. Point of all this: nothing changes. Ever. And all those who wish so fervently that things do change will always be sadly disappointed. Back in 1980, when England won the Grand Slam for the first time since God was a boy, I'd have laughed if you'd told me they'd win a World Cup. But they did. And they will again.
FAO Jim
You think the coverage of Ireland is bad on the 91Èȱ¬? Rugby League gets 1 short show on a Sunday morning during the regular season, and about 4 games every 'now and then' for the Challenge Cup, which mirrors the FA Cup in football.
It's about time the 91Èȱ¬ provide more coverage of RL.
rugby update, yes, and english if not maybe england - the menu for rugby union includes results, fixtures and tables. click and you get inernational, english, irish, scottish and welsh. no problem with international and the last three but click on england and everytime you get '404 - Pae not found'. It's been like this for (at least) a couple of weeks. I sent a message via contact but still nothing happened.
Can we have english details back please?