Crio’s Question: What’s your sports viewing pecking order

It became apparent to me on Sunday evening that I need to make some big decisions these days – and I’m not always good at that.

This particular conundrum involved a clash between the Doggies v Lions from Canberra and the Sydney FC v Victory match.  As usual, it was resolved by a visit to the “Doot”, my local pub,  whose multiscreens enabled me to watch the two games as well as sneak a sideways glance at the golf.

On Sunday evenings there is invariably soccer, footy or cricket and the very impressive TVN coverage of Hong Kong races competing with domestic chores in Club Crio.

FOX Sports has brought with it a need to prioritise. Fox Sports News serves a purpose and rugby league has a chance on quiet Monday nights, but I can ditch any game of rugby union, and Sky dogs and trots are not on my “yellow button”.

Wrestling, novelty sports, basketball and tennis can’t compete for my attention. The Winter Olympics won’t make my playlist (neither did the summer Games).

Horse racing, Aussie rules, soccer and cricket are the winners in my household.

What’s your pecking order for sports viewing?

Comments

  1. You can leave out the soccer. Footy and cricket rule the roost in our place, but strange things happen when your children go off on a sporting tangent. I’ve found myself getting very involved in gymnastics (at the Olympics and Comm Games) and tennis because my kids are interested. Weird hey?

  2. Peter Flynn says

    (1) Cracket
    (2) Nags
    (3) Footy
    (4) Whackdamn (Golf)
    (5) Tennis
    (6) Chelsea FC

  3. Damian Watson says

    Footy and cricket are at the top of the ranking for me.

    Personally I would like to see more European handball on TV, I believe it is an entertaining sport even if only certain European and Asian countries compete.

  4. Steve Healy says

    Footy.

    Enough said

  5. Damian Watson says

    I should also add Womens Beach Volleyball.

  6. Peter Flynn says

    Hurling is a cracker of a sport.

  7. John Butler says

    I personally can’t wait for Eddie to cover the Curling in his big Footy voice.

  8. Richard Jones says

    No, definitely no, racing.
    Try doing that as part of your living, month in-month out. Going to the neddies, pen and notebook in hand, to report on it. What a non-event: a bunch of midgets astride over-bred and dare I say it, over-medicated steeds.
    Add harness racing. Same comments apply. Except that tugging a chariot around the course is supposed to be exciting.

    No A Division soccer or whatever it is that Melbourne Victory and Sydney F.C. contest. But EPL, yes sirree, and anything from the top bracket in Italy, Germany and Spain. Not mad about the top flight in France, though.

    State of Origin R.L., three Wednesdays in winter. Must watch for me. No-neckers running full tilt into each other. Gripping stuff.

    Definitely no tennis until finals weekend. On any surface.

    Golf, funnily enough, I don’t mind. Some people equate it to watching grass growing (that’s tennis on hard courts, for mine) but maybe my old dad, who entered his retirement years as manager of the Bell Park G.C in Geelong, had an influence there.

    Oh yeah, and cycling. As a teenager used to accompany the aforesaid Pater to the Geelong West velodrome on summer evenings. There we’d watch Sid Patterson and Russell Mockridge take on Mario Morettini and sundry other imported Italians. Match racing.
    So now never miss the Tour de France. What about that stunning countryside the riders pass through. Worth a few hours in July just for the scenery alone.

  9. Josh Barnstable says

    1, Footy
    2, Cricket
    3, Tennis
    4, Lawnbowls
    5, Basketball
    6, Volleball

  10. Richard Naco says

    There was once a time where, if it was a team sport, I would be in to it. Even Rugby League (pre Super League silliness). But in order to establish a balanced lifestyle with a partner who evinces no passion for sport at all (recent conversion/ perversion to AFL notwithstanding), I restrict myself these daze to being a polytheist in the pantheon of sporting gods.

    All hail the great god Sher Rin!!!

    My past heresies, all now safely discarded, were:

    * Basketball – I coached it for 25 years in four states (achieving the heights of anonymity: everybody hadn’t heard of me) & was even responsible for perverting the 36ers home crowd from being very City of Churches’ polite in to a loud, proud fun place to be at a game (it involved a rubber chook, elasticised string, a bugle & a lot of signs). NBL now stands for No Body’s Left (especially in the stands), & the demise of the Australian domestic League (& imminent collapse of the NBA – losses of US$400,000,000 per season are hardly sustainable) is a tragedy. Killer for me was Fox Sports getting the exclusive broadcast rites [sic] (which meant that the 2009 WNBL finals on the ABC pulled a fair larger viewing audience than the NBL’s on Fox), and the NBL being gormless enough to run a ‘national’ competition with no team in Sydney (or Brisneyland) (or Canberra). If I can’t go see it, it ain’t there.

    * Gridiron – aka, Ballet With Violence. I was actually one of the triumvirate who founded the South Australian Gridiron Association (and the acronym of that was my idea, although subsequent oligarchies changed it to something far more banal & infinitely less marketable) in the early 80s, but petty politics blighted that competition even before the first game and it has sensationally under performed since. Fox gaining exclusive rights to the NFL again killed my access to the sport, and with it, my interest.

    * Premier League Soccer – although Fox relieving public networks (SBS & the ABC in this instance) of access to games was a major blow to my passion for any sport, the reality is that a code so dominated by billionaire teams effectively reducing leagues to two horse races is hardly all encompassing. Scotland has been the realm of the two Glasgow teams basically since Kenneth MacAlpine invaded in 879, and the EPL has followed suit with Chelsea & Man Ure (once described as a clothing company with a football team as a side interest) buying the championship at will. It goes further: Italy is always either Milan team, Juventus or (occasionally) Roma or Lazio; Barca & Real have divided Spain’s La Liga; Lyon rule France. In fact, there is very little change each season now in the names of the national champions in all European leagues, and it’s all down to pure money talking. And when money is the sole decisive factor, corruption is never far behind (check out the World Cup bidding process for confirmation of that fact) & boredom its terminal condition. And no, I don’t want Australia to host the World Crock!

    [/soap box]

  11. There are 6 channels in our house: Fox 1, 2, 3, ESPN, Eurosport and if all else fails Fox 8.

    In order of preference:
    1. AFL
    2. Cricket (all forms)
    3. Baseball
    4. Soccer
    5. Rugby League
    6. Gridiron
    7. Rugby Union
    8. Basketball (NBA only)
    9. “Lingerie Bowl” (Women’s NFL)

  12. Nice reminder Tim,

    I like the World Series Baseball.

    Great to mark assignments in front of.

  13. 1. AFL, Cricket
    2. NFL
    3. American Major League baseball playoffs
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    178. The rest
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    345. ESPN Australia

  14. Premier League coverage is disappointing. The Fox EPL package was gold when Martin Tyler and Andy Gray did the pre-match, halftime and wrap, but now it’s wall to wall games, which is a bore if you don’t really follow any team (I follow Wimbledon AFC in the Blue Square Football Conference Premier League after the other Wimbledon got sold to Don Maynard Keynes).

  15. Richard,

    I understand your annoyance with the basketball being on Fox rather than free-to-air, but I think the public has been duped on this issue.

    Since the advent of Pay TV, successive governments have helped the free-to-air stations entirely, and cynically, to curry favours with the all-powerful moguls who own them. Witness Minister Conroy’s $250 million handout to the moguls just this week.

    If the moguls didn’t get so many free-kicks, pay-TV would have been able to compete with free to air and perhaps buy the rights to certain sports and then offer cheap subscriptions because they haven’t paid over the odds for the rights in the first place. This would have been the best result for sports fans.

    The practice of putting certain sporting events on a pay-TV banned list, like the Ashes, ultimately does sports fans a disservice.

    It’s almost irrelevant now anyway. The advent of the internet means that viewers can watch online in real time or download later. Pay-TV will be forced out of the Australian market before it ever had the chance to establish itself.

    By the way, I’m just borrowing these opinions from Melbourne media commentator Margaret Simons.

  16. Tim,
    We have your “yellow button” plus TVN and Fox sports News.
    Also, when you get cable TV, have you ever completely overlooked free-to-air only to find out later that you missed something relatively interesting?

  17. Crio,
    You’re spot on, just relying on Fox is a really bad habit I’ve fallen into. A perfect example is the W League soccer, I actually find it quite enjoyable, and having a Canberra team to support makes it even better. Alas, far too often I would miss it completely.

Leave a Comment

*