Friday, March 29, 2024

ALTERNATIVE VIEW: Big rugby supporters are rural

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Can I start by congratulating those who competed at the Commonwealth Games. Getting there is hard enough, winning medals of any colour is exceptional.
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That we won 15 gold medals is a huge tribute to the thousands of training, support and administration staff as well as the people on the podium.

So extremely well done to all involved.

The wooden spoon for the Games goes to Television New Zealand. What a shower they were.

I want to watch NZ athletes in action. 

I don’t want to watch Toni Street swanning around interviewing people whose relevance to me is about as much as a bicycle is to a fish.

I also don’t want Australian and British commentators giving me the wisdom of their asinine and irrelevant views. It came across a little like them casting their pearls to the swine. 

And the coverage was confusing and bitsy. I never knew what was going to be on and when. 

The unannounced flicking between channels also encouraged a drive to drink.

In a sentence it was bitsy, unpredictable, confusing and totally unprofessional.

In NZ we’re spoiled by extremely professional coverage of sport with Sky. It is world-class and far better in my view than sports coverage in Australia, Europe and Britain.

Further, the Sky commentary team is, across the board, relevant and professional.

No, I don’t like to pay for sport that in many cases I’ve subsidised through taxes but yes, Sky Sport is worth the money.

So now we have Sky Sport sidelined for not only next year’s Rugby World Cup but also the Women’s Rugby World Cup, the World Sevens and the World Under 20 Championship. 

We won’t have the professionalism of Sky but the amateurish imitation of TVNZ.

The analysis so far has been on the commentators TVNZ can attract and, yes, there are some strong names there.

A successful television sports broadcast isn’t just about commentators, it is also about camera angles and expertise and highly specialised directors and producers.

Yes, an international feed might be available but that’s largely what we had at the recent Commonwealth Games. 

Iniquitously our only television reception comes through a Sky dish. We can’t receive free to air television any other way. 

If we want any television we need Sky.

The second issue for me is the sad lack of strong broadband in a lot of rural NZ. 

We’ve been told by technical experts old and rural people will be disadvantaged by the TVNZ-Spark deal and fitting both categories I can sympathise.

According to the 2013 census only 65.6% of Masterton homes had access to the internet and though that will have inevitably increased, the rural areas will be far worse off.

Rugby Union supremo Steve Tew sees a rosy picture in the Spark-TVNZ deal.

Suggesting more New Zealanders than ever will have access to live World Cup Rugby is, in my view, an inaccurate, narrow, Wellington-centric approach. 

Wairarapa Bush president Richard Dahlberg has a different view.

“Quite frankly, I don’t understand it. I don’t want to understand it,” he said.

“I want to sit on a couch, open a beer and turn the television on.

“I don’t want to watch rugby on ipads, phones or computers.

“Rather than watch rugby on a cell phone I’d like the opportunity to be able to talk to some bugger on it.”

The issue is there are many technical problems.

The Telecom 4G network they’re touting needs a considerable amount of band width. There are concerns that is feasible.

Some claim satellite technology will be fine to provide a broadband service to enable those in rural NZ to watch the cup.

I disagree. In theory maybe you can but in practice I doubt it because there are considerable latency and jitter problems with a satellite service.

In addition, because of the limited bandwidth a game can use five gig of data, meaning if you have a 20 gig plan that will give you just four games.

There is one solution and that is for the Government to shorten the Rural Broadband Initiative Two project from three years to one.

It will be more expensive because the accelerated plan will require extra money for hardware and staff.

On one hand it would be good to accelerate broadband access to our rural hinterland.

On the other I’m opposed to using taxpayer dollars to subsidise the foibles of the Rugby Union, TVNZ and Spark.

My main concern is that unlike Britain and Argentina, where rugby is an elite, urban based sport in New Zealand it isn’t.

It has a strong base in the provincial heartland where broadband coverage is limited.

I can understand TVNZ and Spark continuing to ignore us but for the NZRFU to follow them is myopic in the extreme.

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