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Last week was a bad one for Australian football, but for those in the football media the past few days have been a godsend. So many major talking points have erupted it’s a wonder whether One HD’s new football show ‘World Football News’ will have time to mention them all.
The show kicked off in mid-February – somewhat curiously, since the A-League season was about to come to an end – and on their Twitter bio, World Football News touted themselves as “Australia’s first free-to-air football program.”
It took the folks at ‘The World Game’ about six seconds to alert their new rivals to the error, but it seems only natural to use SBS’ flagship football program as a point of reference.
Unlike their long-established counterpart, World Football News has a heavy emphasis on English football – not surprisingly, since the Premier League is the brand of choice for the young demographic One HD pitches itself to.
The English theme continues in the form of host Chris Bailey, a former professional tennis player who cut his broadcasting teeth with the BBC and Sky Sports News in the United Kingdom.
Bailey is an innocuous enough anchor, but at times the show looks like it desperately needs an injection of charisma.
The one panelist I’ve been particularly impressed with is David Zdrilic – not because he’s an especially cheerful character – but mainly because ‘Zdrila’ actually provides some cultured analysis of games.
He’s also familiar with the Bundesliga – I should know, I saw him in action for both SSV Ulm and SpVgg Unterhaching – and while his co-panelists look terrified at the mention of anything other than English football, Zdrilic regularly chimes in with some thoughtful insights into the German game.
Mind you, I’m surprised he still bothers since live Bundesliga coverage disappeared long ago from One HD screens, along with the haphazard Serie A coverage that lasted just a matter of weeks.
Analysis of Asian football is also non-existent, despite the fact that the Asian Champions League is in full swing, while the likes of Josh Kennedy and Joel Griffiths continue to score freely for their respective Asian sides.
It’s great that the show will highlight Melbourne Victory’s clash with Beijing Guoan and Adelaide United’s trip to Pohang to take on the Steelers this week, but it would be even better if they offered some actual insight into the opposition – something that in this day and age shouldn’t be that hard to do.
Still, it’s nice to see another free-to-air network broadcast some football, although I’m not convinced that One HD’s new-found interest means that A-League coverage will invariably end up on the channel.
In his FourFourTwo column a couple of months back, Fox Sports commentator Simon Hill made the perfectly reasonable point that not one free-to-air network has laid decent money on the table to broadcast the A-League.
Calls for free-to-air A-League coverage are understandable, but they’re of little value unless a commercial network actually stumps up a reasonable sum of money to buy the broadcast rights.
I personally feel that some A-League fans are guilty of looking a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to the coverage offered by Fox Sports, although I agree that in an ideal world we’d at least have a highlights show on free-to-air.
For now, non-Pay TV subscribers can choose between The World Game and World Football News for their weekly dose of football analysis.
The jury is still out on the merits of the newcomer, and the first thing they could do to start building a loyal fanbase is stick to a consistent time slot.
I’d also like to see a little less emphasis on English football and a little more insight into the Asian game, but for now let’s call World Football News an interesting work in progress.