By Ben Harman
March 7 2003

It is hard to fathom the thinking behind SKY's choice of game sometimes. Tahe the upcoming weekend of 7 and 8 March, for example. On the evening of 7 March, when many are yet to return from work, and many more will be putting the kids to bed or competing for the tv (as Bear in the Big Blue House is clearly of more importance), we will be treated to ACT vs. Bulls. I'm sure it'll be a good enough game and frankly I welcome any rugby onto the telly.

However on the 8th in the morning (our time) the Auckland Blues host the Canterbury Crusaders, this may well be an early preview of the final and could be the first time in a couple of years that the Crusaders have been beaten. It is undoubtedly the pick of the weekend's games.

Clearly Australian style aerobics has a higher priority than rugby union for SKY.

I took Barnsey to task over this a couple of weeks ago. He very politely sidestepped the question and deferred it to 'our super twelve team' When pressed he said that it was 'something to do with the time difference'.

Last year SKY showed the NPC which for me was great as I love that competition. However almost every game screened featured Buck's old team North Harbour, who it has to be said were struggling a little. Meanwhile Waikato, Canterbury and especially Auckland were playing some superb rugby (by all accounts).

Finally as some will know the Kiwis are lucky enough to have The Rugby Channel, 24 hours of rugby seven days a week, this channel is owned and run by.... SKY of course, they televise all S12 games involving Kiwi teams as well as 3 NPC games a week. So BSKYB over here have the content within their network of companies to choose from a wide variety of fixtures but fail us on a weekly basis. The answer, give us The Rugby Channel as a premium package on SKY. Games which BSKYB do not have the rights to show could be substituted for 'classic' (rerun) ZP games. There would be no extra studio costs, no extra outside broadcasts necessary, and we the rugby punters would not have to sit through endless wendyball adverts.