Dreading the ITV coverage

This guy sounds awful & Gomersall! WTF?

Would much rather hear the Aussie Greg Clarke commentate.

At least Gommarsal has only recently retired. I find these players give a better insight on todays game. Better than some has been from the mid 70's/80's

Yes he just came in with a deep insight " Dan Carter has a left foot"

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:Yes he just came in with a deep insight " Dan Carter has a left foot"

Its a start....

Shame It's not on BBC unless its Eddie Butler which means ITV is better.

If this is a sign of things to come then god help us!

Bill Williams is frightening!

coverage and presentation has been pretty good so far. i am plesantly suprised. no Rosenthal, which is a big plus.

i was not suprised that within minutes of the itv rwc coverage starting we heared about rwc03.

i think itv have already improved on their coverage of previous tournaments.

I'm using The Alternative Rugby Commentary on www.arcrugby.co.nz

Beware lots of strong language and for some reason they keep playing music in the background.

dogtooth wrote:coverage and presentation has been pretty good so far. i am plesantly suprised. no Rosenthal, which is a big plus.

i was not suprised that within minutes of the itv rwc coverage starting we heared about rwc03.

i think itv have already improved on their coverage of previous tournaments.

Can you imagine though if Wales had won in 2003 how much abuse the TV comapnies would get for not always mentioning it?
( 2 GRAND SLAMS)

It annoys me that they called the 8.30 start "Opening Ceremony". They hardly showed any of it, just Dallaglio chatting about 2003.

Few bumps on the way, the lads looks scared of the touch screen. Big Lal scared to really give it a press and the rest signal just before the 2nd half. Was always going to be Anglocentric before the game.

Could be worse. Gommarsal > Barnes and Dewi.

I had an open mind but ITV coverage was crap - particularly the commentary.

Oh come on, the commentary wasn't that bad in fairness, it could have been much worse. The only drawback was the advert breaks! And you are exaggerating how much Dellaglio spoke about 03 and England.

Unsurprisngly poor from ITV. No opening ceremony shown for the advertised opening ceremony segment, just a 50 min segment peppered with 7 advert breaks, the pundits talking about NZ choking and faltering with the small bit of technology & analysis (Fitzpatrick with his Sky experience was the only one who knew what he was doing there). Post match analysis was dreadful, far too little time and nothing of note discussed.

I'd rather be down the pub watching it on Sky.

The sound was turned off on my telly and that worked fine for me.No complaints.

It comes to something when I have to say that I'd rather have had John Inverdale presenting!

Absolutley DREADFUL.

As mentioned, NO coveregae of the opening ceremony, just showed the speaches with a few seconds of the ceremony.... and then straight after "over to Dunedin" to hear from the English camp..... FFS, this was the opening ceremony. England arent playing, give some credit to those who are, and credit to all those who worked hard to put on a ceremony, BY SHOWING IT....

I'm glad that S4C had the grace to realise that the opening ceremnony of a World Cup is important and showed it.... Well done S4C...

Can you imagine the outrage next year if the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics is not shown, just some muppets in the studio performing some pointless player analysis and news....

Bet they wont do that come 2015 when England hold the cup.



ITV should lose the right to hold the cup next time. Give it to the BBC, as it should be free and we all know Sky cant do free.

I thought the commentary was awful. Neither Gommersal nor Gillingham were sufficiently clued up with the Tongan players - little pre-match preparation other than a few beers I would suggest - and neither seemed particularly insightful when analysing replays.

The studio work back in London was a ramshackle affair, Sean F is an old hand in media terms now and expresses himself well. FP was quiet, but Dayglo was a bit of an embarrasment - fine player he may have been and a World Cup winner to boot, but having at least a basic mastery of your mother tongue should be a pre-requisite for someone trying to explain the finer points of the game/competition. He may hold controversial and entertaining views, but he cannot express them.

urine-poor as usual.

At least we can watch it though. There isnt any coverage for my friend is Austria who i got in to Rugby. He has to stream it...

Glad I have Setanta at work and RTE at home.

No enthusiasm whatsoever in the commentary, just bored me a bit. I can see why you Celts get annoyed with us English, I did cringe when they recieved England squad news from Dunedin during the ceremony. Just always remember, such bias is out of the players' and fans' control!

EnglishReign - I try to remember that but it's difficult, made even more so when some English posters on here don't think there's anything wrong with it!

Not watched the coverage of ITV yet (am stuck in work ) but will analyse it later. Really think I'll be sticking to S4C for this world cup though, they really know how to cover rugby.

Dreamer I have to say I don't see the big deal personally. Welsh have S4C anyway.

Here we go again

I know I have S4C Stag, that why I've said I'm most likely going to watch that instead.

rugbydreamer wrote:I know I have S4C Stag, that why I've said I'm most likely going to watch that instead.

Which will be Wales centered and mentioned if there not playing
RTE will be the same for ireland i expect
dont know if they have it but i'm sure BBC Alba will be very Scotland in thier coverage
England will have............oh well we'll have to watch ITV

Where was Jim Rosenthal??

I've already said on other threads that it's understandable that England will get more coverage than the other home nations. But as it stand ITV is being broadcast as a national channel and should do it's utmost to reflect that. Yes Wales, Scotland etc might have other options to watch the rwc, but if ITV is catering just for the English market then they should advertise themselves as such imo.

And I know I'm getting a bit het up about it (The Beeb properly peed me off with their reporting on the rwc this morning) and add to that I'm feeling rubbish it's making me very grumpy. Usually things like this don't bother me quite so much, am hoping I get my cheer back tomorrow and can just focus back on the rugby, and failing that, if I do watch ITV, I'll just hit the mute button

I had an open mind but ITV coverage was crap - particularly the commentary.

as for those of us hoping to 'catch up' later... ITV havnt yet put the match on their 'ITVplayer' 3hours later. It better be available come 5.30 when i get home!!!!!!!

Honestly though if they had mentioned Wales what would they have said that you didnt already no and wasnt utterly banal?

At least Wales gets a proper indepth rugby magazine show courtesy of the BBC which covers all levels of the game.

Its not like all the English people were glued to their sets enthralled by LOLs saying " well when we won the cup in 2003..."

Besides which theyd have to do it in two languages or some of your lot would still end up gettinmg offended, and then youd just moan that the content wasnt interesting or that it was patronsing.

If you want to find a reason to be offended you will do.

We all had to sit and get subjected to 80 minutes of Pacific Islanders running around, not one of them mentioning England (even in the context of potential pension funds) in the post match interviews.

Seems some people (usually Welsh) just want to find any excuse they can to moan about England

And some ar on this site simply to troll about Wales.

Thought the commentary was poor but had high hopes of the pundits. Dallaglio was my only doubt and he wasn't that great but I really like Fitzpatrick and Francois Pienaar. Happy to wait and see who gets commentary on other games and analysis should get better once there's more to talk about. So far 5 out of 10.

Werent yo offended by Piennar mentioning his world cup experince?

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:
Werent yo offended by Piennar mentioning his world cup experince?

Indeed. What was a South African doing mentioning South Africas win in the build up to a match between New Zealand and Tonga ? I hope there's been letters of complaint to ITV about that.

I guess some people would not be interested in the opening ceremony of the most important event in the rugby calendar.

I was all set to watch it on ITV, turned it on for the opening ceremony and wondered why it hadn't started yet- just the pundits making inane small talk. Then they mentioned that the opening ceremony was already underway

So I immediately turned over to RTE to see that. I think I will be watching any games that are covered by both channels on RTE.

I don't think we get Logie either for the Ireland games!

Perosnlay Id rather listen to a Welshamn talking about his world cup victory than sit through the tedious banality of an opening ceremony but it is a bit ridiculous they advertised showing it then didnt.

rugbydreamer wrote:I've already said on other threads that it's understandable that England will get more coverage than the other home nations. But as it stand ITV is being broadcast as a national channel and should do it's utmost to reflect that. Yes Wales, Scotland etc might have other options to watch the rwc, but if ITV is catering just for the English market then they should advertise themselves as such imo.

Spot on statement. Channels like S4C and RTE make it no secret that they're there to speak from their respective nations' point of view. ITV is not part of this bracket however, they portray themselves as British, not exclusively English. It's hypocritical false advertising.

WC winners ranting is understandable, however discussing England's chances this time (even going so far as a live report from outside the headquarters) while making no ackowledgement of the other home nations is not in my eyes. As I said on another thread, an outsider could easily have thought England were the only side qualified.

To be honest, anyone who follows the game in any depth will find the pre-game boring unless there is a really recent development or if the two teams playing a very much unknown.

I agree that the level of coverage focussing on England is too much (and I'm an England fan), but I don't want it replaced with news on Wales/Ireland/Scotland. I want to hear about the teams about to play. In the case of today I would have wanted coverage of the opening ceremony and then pundits talking about Tonga and NZ. THAT would have been worth bothering with.

The two commentators are not great but they also haven't really bugged me yet. At least (unlike Barnes) they didn't keep repeating the same "fact" that is actually wrong. Usually Barnes will see an incident such as a marginally late tackle and harp on about it being a straight red offence, or see a blatant unprovoked punch to the face and say "it's all handbags out there, I'm not sure why the referee is making such a fuss". I want the commentator to tell me what is happening and not to blether on about single incidents as if they are the only ones that happened.

And FINALLY.... At least the replays have shown the actual passage of play before a try. Sky normally show a slow mo replay of the player putting the ball down that tells you nothing more about what happened.

Rant over. For now.

"I want to hear about the teams about to play. In the case of today I would have wanted coverage of the opening ceremony and then pundits talking about Tonga and NZ. THAT would have been worth bothering with"


This I completely, completely agree with.

rugbydreamer wrote:"I want to hear about the teams about to play. In the case of today I would have wanted coverage of the opening ceremony and then pundits talking about Tonga and NZ. THAT would have been worth bothering with"


This I completely, completely agree with.

+1

Cymroglan wrote:

rugbydreamer wrote:"I want to hear about the teams about to play. In the case of today I would have wanted coverage of the opening ceremony and then pundits talking about Tonga and NZ. THAT would have been worth bothering with"


This I completely, completely agree with.

+1

+2 (++1) not sure of the standard

However nobody does this. Every single broadcaster in the world (or at least the very very few that I've seen) are biased to a select group. They will cover the team they believe their view is interested in over any they believe they're not.

Well, I had the New Zealand feed here in the US and listened to their broadcast. Their usual broadcasters who do a nice job. Obviously very NZ focused. I had no problem with that because it is what I expected. I suppose when going to a wider audience then the broadcast should have that taken into account. I woud have liked to see a broad based analysis and review of the RWC in general.

+3

ITV used to have regions, in fact in 2/3rds of Scotland and in NI they still. do. Regionalize the coverage for the relevant country's game, like they used to.

The coverage of the Rugby World Cup had been in the hands of the ITV network for quite a few tournaments now and I was a little dissapointed with the coverage of the first match this morning. The fact that the RWC is one of the biggest sporting events in the world seemed not to register with the ITV network. You would of thought the opening ceremony would have deserved a bit more TV time. The hour before before kick off was filled with a bored Steve Ryder who I think would rather be in a Champions League studio rather than talking rugby. The opening ceremony seemed to be a sideshow that was getting in the way of advertising. Even when they did cross over to New Zealand to see parts of the ceremony it wasn't always live as I was turning over to S4C who were more curteous in showing the whole ceremony as it happened. If you bid for something as big as the RWC then surely it's your duty to show something like an opening ceremomy in it's entirety. If ITV had the Olympics next year would they treat that opening ceremony with the same respect. Thinking about it they probably would. Thoughts ladies & gents.



Merging this with the existing ITV thread - KRD