Commentary team were miles better than sky but Claire Baldwin should have been in the studio.

who???

i thought it was a good improvement from the beeb, but RF surely has had his day now. leaguie legend, but its time to put him in the studio as "expert" at the very best. he should not be commentating this now, the beeb have many more better in their ranks on the radio

Really? More people in the UK are interested in knowing which rider won the Tour de France than the Challenge Cup Semi Finals?

I wonder how many people on the streets across the UK could name the winner of the Tour this morning – I bet a fair few more would be able to tell you who are in the semi’s of our cup

Agreed.

you'd be wrong with that

Well, this forum is all about opinions and you are entitled to yours but mine is that there are many Rugby League fans around the country who will have seen the games this weekend and the names will come easy to them (particularly on the streets of the hotbeds of our game)

Whereas I have been following the Tour closely this year with Cavendish doing so well and securing the Green jersey and I couldn’t remember the winners name

I really do think we underestimate our games appeal sometimes

I think its amazing we're as big as we are considering how we get treated in the national media. You'd think premiership tiddlywinks was bigger than us as far as the papers go yet not many other sports would have a 25k wigan saints derby and hardly get a sniff of a mention the next day.

And rock god, that is how it's typically pronounced

Is it? It's not how I would typically pronounce it.

Even if it was the case that every single other individual by that name pronounced it 'Hawton', you would think that the a BBC commentator would know enough about the sport to pronounce it properly. I reckon the name 'Kearney' is typically pronounced differently to how the Bradford half pronounces it, but it's a commentator's job to know that.

errmm yes? The Hull FC player is the first of many of that spelling that i've heard that way. I have 5 or 6 friends with that name and not one of them pronounces it the way the hull player does. Weird.. its probably a NW/NE thing maybe?

Maybe it is. The point still stands: French should know what players are called and how their names are pronounced. That's the very least I think we can expect from him.

Reading this thread, I'm glad that I was at an Aunt and Uncle's Golden Wedding celebration do in West Yorkshire this weekend (including an excellent curry on Saturday night in Bradford), so I didn't get to see the games!

Rugby League, a BBC2 sport - both quarters and semis relegated to the least popular station