20 Years of Sky Sports Coverage is marked on April 19th when Bradford play Leeds.
Their first match they showed was on April 19th 1991 when Castleford hosted Leeds in a Premiership Semi Final (they had taken over coverage from BSB Sport Channel after a merger).
Now I don't really want to get into a debate about the quality of Sky's current commentary team but what are your thoughts on the way Sky has covered the game over those years?
Whilst Sky's increased coverage of League Matches has been good (I think anyway) has the sport overall lost out by losing a lot of the BBC Coverage in that 20 years? I think so, particularly in test matches.
And what has been the most memorable Wigan game (or any other game for that matter) covered by Sky?
I'll list a few Wigan ones......
Good Friday 1993 - Wigan 8 St Helens 8
Back then Sky only had one channel so matches being shown delayed happened quite often and that was the case with this title decider. If Saints had won they'd have opened up a 4 point gap over Wigan and would have only needed 1 point in their final match to win the title and having led 8-2 Wigan had a hell of a long way to fight back on a heavy pitch. Wigan did fight back and it looked like Joe Lydon had scored a drop goal late on to make it 9-8. But the rules of the time meant that if the drop goal was touched in flight it didn't count and thus the match was drawn - "a title decider than decided nothing". Wigan won the title on points difference in the end (they had a game in hand).
Boxing Day 1994 - St Helens 25 Wigan 32
Sky's best ever game for me. Adam Fogerty only got a yellow card for headbutting Neil Cowie before Henry Paul was sent off for an innocuous trip on Steve Prescott before half time. Wigan had built up a 20-2 lead at the break so it wasn't all bad but Saints launched a second half fight back with a further sin bin to Gary Connolly giving them a two man advantage. Just as Connolly returned Kelvin Skerrett was binned for fighting with Ian Pickavance (who also went). Saints in all that time had turned 20-2 down into a 25-20 lead but Steve Prescott's error allowed Wigan a rare second half attack, Tuigamala barrelled over four Saints men to score and Wigan won in the end 32-25.
9th June 1996 - Wigan 18 London 18
Sky only showed Highlights but Terry b*stard Matterson costing us the title
And no fatbaztod, a fight between those two would be broken up by one of the other players going down like a sack of poop at the slightest contact.
Also I think the 20-12 win over Saints to clinch a playoff place in 2007 could have made the list. We ended a dire run of results against the Old Enemy in which we didn't beat them since Good Friday 2005 and David Vaealiki leaving Paul Wellens on his backside was fantastic.
