Thanks to Origin, Nine will smash its competitors nationally once again on wednesday. The Nine network without RL would be in great danger of losing It's number one status,no wonder why so many TV stations want's Australia's number one sport,This great game has come a long way from the mining and steel towns of the north of England.Everywhere you go everyone's talking about State of Origin,no matter how many times Queensland give it to us,people will watch It cause It's the greatest sport spectacle on the Australian calendar.


Thx to the poms for the greatest game of all.

And there I was thinking it was the Bedisloe cup?/Super 14 or something.



That's how it is portrayed over here cos RL don't exist.

Ask Mike Peschardt the BBC correspondent in Aus!!!

being in australia last year during the melbourne cup i can say it felt exactly like grand national day here...the same kind of buzz imo

horse racing isn't a sport! It's just an excuse to give short people jobs. HTH

in other words

BORING!

If all the TV stations want it, how come it doesnt get the TV deal it deserves. How come the AFL tv rights are bigger?

Not for long!

Top 50 Programs 2009 – Combined

1 STATE OF ORIGIN RUGBY LEAGUE NSW V QLD 1ST - MATCH 3,441
2 TENNIS: 2009 AUST OPEN - DAY 9 NIGHT SESSION 3,109
3 UNDERBELLY: A TALE OF TWO CITIES 3,070
4 TENNIS: 2009 AUST OPEN - MEN'S FINAL 3,011
5 TWENTY/20 - AUSTRALIA V SOUTH AFRICA GAME 2 2,940
6 TWENTY/20 - AUSTRALIA V SOUTH AFRICA 2,781
7 THE BIGGEST LOSER (AUS) - THE WINNER ANNOUNCED 2,769
8 PACKED TO THE RAFTERS 2,607
9 THE BIGGEST LOSER (AUS) - FINALE NIGHT 2,393
10 STATE OF ORIGIN RUGBY LEAGUE NSW V QLD 1ST - PRE MATCH 2,366

Both the NRL and AFL Grand Finals will blow Origin out of the park.

Typo corrected! You mean both the NRL GF and the SoO will blow AFL out of the park.

Underbelly - a tale of two titties - worth watching if it gets to the UK

A mixture of luck, competition and old fashioned good management. On his deathbed, Kerry Packer put in a cheeky bid for the rights which pushed Channels 7 and 10 to raise theirs to a ridiculous, unsustainable level. We're told Kerry did it to off his old rivals.

You also can't get past the fact that their sport is much better run than Rugby league is in this country and we have too close a relationship to Foxtel, Channel Nine and News Ltd. and appear to kow tow to them.

It also doesn't help that a lot of TV people seem to ignore regional NSW and Qld ratings (which add hundreds of thousands of viewers to RL's column and are bigger than Perth and Adelaide combined) in favour of the 5 capital city ratings (which oddly also excludes Canberra, another RL area).

I think the future's brighter, though, with plans to split up the rep games and the NRL - so hopefully we can start to get what we deserve.