Massive overreaction (as usual) from people who scrutinise Mike's every word. I was watching at the time, he was making the point that players over there are a lot more professional than they were in the not too distant past and problems are few and far between these days.

This series is a case in point; remember the days when the WCC was just a big knees-up?

Not really a very good example. Hanley learnt to look after himself after a stint in jail.

I've said before, Sky have put all of their energy, time and broadcasting money into Formula 1 and have put all their profits into Premier League football clubs.

F1 has it's own channel and they follow the races around the world all season with what must be a gigantic army of people and nal of technology they take with them from wherever they go. It cost them £455m for the live rights for F1, never mind all the money they must spend on the broadcasting of it with all the people they employ and the technology they use. Then Sky dish out £81m to each Prem footy club each season.

What we're left with is the likes of Dwight York and Niall Quinn giving utterly zero insight into the game of football. They've lost the Champions League, they don't show all La Liga games 'as live' like they used to (Barca v Atleti a few weeks ago wasn't the live broadcast and last season viewers had to sit through the first 15minutes of El Clasico with Guillem Balague giving us updates in the studio because Sky didn't pay for the rights to show the whole game live). They're losing rugby union by the year, they've lost the NBA, they sacked off rugby league NRL/State of Origin/Championship/Boots'n'All/Super League Superstars/the one hour All The Tries prog which is now just half an hour...and just offer up two or three live games a week with no other programming of our sport and other sports fans, even football, don't get what they used to for their Sky subscription.

Sky have are losing the plot with their sports programming. Every sport is being thinned out and trimmed down to accommodate the huge money going into F1 broadcasting and Prem football clubs(not broadcasting).

Whats up, don't you want to be watching the National Kabbadi league, or the womens netball classic from Sunderland YMCA sports hall?

I can't get enough of seeing re-runs of Arsenal v Chelsea from 2012! or Spanish games

To be honest i was looking through all the SKY sports channels up until saturday and apart from live super league there is absolutely nothing that i would want to watch.

think i'll save my money now. why they can't have a package that you can tailor yourself and pay for what you watch rather than everyone having to pay to cover F1 and Premier league football.

I just wish the RFL would just F€CK Sky right off & see what they can get from Premier Sports.
Prem Sports used to do a deal when they showed Championship RL, sign up & name your Championship team who then get £10 of your subscription fees.

If they were smart, they could have 'nearly' every Rugby fan this side of the hemisphere tied in to a deal.
In any case NRL knocks SL into a cocked hat.

Why are there so many commentators? Do you know any other sports where there are 5 or 6 people competing to talk at the same time?

Surely I'm also not the only one who doesn't need Stuart Cummings to tell me whether someone has knocked on or not.

Is there any way to automatically mute the sound whilst O'Connor is talking? Surely nobody believes he deserves to be a TV commentator? But I guess at least one person at Sky must.

Agreed.

I think SC is fulfilling a role that isn't needed.

The commentators have opinions on decisions. He's meant to provide the referee's angle on it but most of the time he's wrong, ambiguous or just non-committal. Doesn't add anything IMO.

Eddie, Barrie, Tez and O'Connor fighting to be heard, with Phil Clarke butting in about the Wigan game - it was like listening to a group of blokes arguing in a pub; it's baffling why they think we need so many voices calling what is, in all fairness, a relatively simple game.

At least Rod Studd was at the Darts last night, one less annoying voice to put with. If only he would stay away from RL all together.

And I forgot Bill Arthur, with his garbled messages from pitch-side!

I would have thought that Sky would sort this mess out, if for no other reason than to save money - there are hordes of people on the commentary gravy train, most of whom are totally superfluous; give the whole gig to Carney and Wells next year, and have ex players in for meaningful analysis; more clarity, less clutter and an end to the painful banter of the current set-up.

Last night seemed particularly bad with seemingly endless yapping from the commentary team, especially when the ref is miked up and talking to his touchjudges ,and/or players and all you can hear is baz & tez yapping away.
the amount of time O'Connor had to apologise for interrupting someone must have been in double figures!

i used to think Rod Studd was alright, but now i think is he trying to break a world record for the most words yelled in 10 seconds?

Wells is no good neither.

He gets far too excited and starts to shout and talk too fast which causes him to get everyone's name wrong. Last year he called Saints' halfbacks "Luke Burns" and "Travis Walsh" after belting out two hundred words in about twenty seconds.