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Tonight’s JJ Giltinan showdown between the Storm and Sharks has been tragically secreted on cable television. It will be seen by nobody bar the wealthy elite and those huddled near shop windows.
Ironically, it’s all the fault of television.
Despite financially underpinning the game and delivering it to the public with great convenience, has anyone noticed how television is to blame for a number of footy’s more crappier aspects?
The title fight for the minor premiership between Melbourne and Cronulla is the latest example of this vital stakeholder’s propensity to impinge on the game and stuff it for the rest of us non-paying shareholders.
If it wasn’t for television’s favouritism forcing the NRL to reclaim power via fixed scheduling, the game of the millennium would’ve been legislated in parliament to be shown as compulsory viewing to trillions on free-to-air, most likely with Warren Boland at the helm on the public broadcaster.
But instead of being transmitted with subtitles across multiple time zones to far-off lands like Jupiter and Adelaide, all at no cost to the viewer, the match will instead be hosted by Matt Shirvington – and it’s all thanks to the intrusion of television.
Don’t get me wrong – if you like turnover, television is pretty handy to have around. So before we start laying in the slipper, here’s a quick disclaimer:
Telly is tops.
But while it may be a friend, confidante and babysitter to many, to rugby league, it is an invaluable, irreplaceable sugar daddy. It smothers itself all over the sport at its own behest, usually at the most inappropriate times.
Here’s a few times it’s cumbersome influence has prolifically vandalised the very game it so freely funds, promotes and nurtures.
First of all, television introduced the replay. A great idea at the time, before it lead to us going hyper-scrupulous, which then lead to the monstrosity of video review technology.
In whichever form you see it – the Bunker, the video referee box, the three-piece box feed – this has been an innovation which, at best, has enjoyed a casual relationship with accuracy.
Worse still, it’s encroachment is responsible for introducing innovations like diving, feigning for penalties and time wasting, while it’s addiction to slow motion has made obstruction and double-movement mistakes more unoriginal than rapping grannies.
Before television, the only way you could replay footage was with sketch artists using flip books. This method was popular in Glebe and Newtown when dreamcatcher sales were slow, and it worked. And best of all, the game was fine.
But now the regular face-palming bungles of modern technology are simply part of the furniture, and it’s all due to the encroachment of television.
However, let’s not stop there. What about the crowded schedule? The representative schedule? The players scheduled to whinge about the schedule? I bet you would love an extra day game or two as well, because we all love vitamin D and an early night.
Sorry kiddo, not while there’s television. Also, if you’re planning a party for this year’s grand final, ask everyone to arrive around January 2017. Television won’t be kicking the match off anytime before then.
But for of all television’s meddling, the piece de resistance is this: the bloody thing introduced us to commentators.
You can blame television for unceremoniously dumping upon us the world’s first ever plague of parrots that come carrying their own agendas.
Thanks a lot, television, for giving us Gorden Tallis’s opinion on Queensland in the middle of a Cronulla game. We are also forever indebted to you for allowing Paul Vautin to give us his opinion on the Sea Eagles, and Nathan Fien’s opinion on anything.
And don’t forget; television also reduces crowd numbers. Appalling.
Sure, nobody’s denying we owe television a fair bit. Not only has it raised our children, it’s generous lining of league’s pockets has bankrolled the game and put the Gidleys and the Morrises alongside the Leylands and the Daddos.
But when I think about the feral pests it has introduced to the league habitat, I can’t help but hark for the good old days of following the game.
You know what I’m talking about; where the only option was Frank Hyde or spending thrippence to dangerously hang from the SCG rafters, when Darcy Lawler could freely fix games without fear of surveillance.
Arguably, the game was better off.
So is summary, television may be the lifeblood of the game, but it is the root of many evils.
Let’s hope it is reduced in the next broadcast deal.