As you may be aware Premier Sports has the rights to all the Rugby League World Cup Matches and it is now Free on Virgin 551 if you subscribe to their XL service which also includes BT Sport 1 & 2 and ESPN this will only be for a couple of months and there will be a subscription charge from 2014 yet to be announced but sky subscribers pay £10 a month so i would guess it would be the same for Virgin.

For those not aware of Premier Sports I has the right to one live Championship game a week normally once a week
Sheffield was featured quite a lot last season it will be interesting to see if the coverage improves on a TV because the online Premier Player can be a bit shaky at times !!! They also show a lot of NRL with a couple of Live games a week and sometimes delayed "live" coverage of other NRL games the rest of their sports schedule apart from the NHL coverage which is very good 1-2 games a night it is not particually appealing Irish Sports, South American Football, Nascar.

Subscribed on Thursday via Sky (can't get Virgin where I live even if I wanted it)

Recorded the two games on Sunday as I didn't get home from Cardiff until 17:30. First impressions are not very good. The PNG game cut off as he was lining up the last minute penalty - fortunately as the next programme was the NZ game I actually saw the end. NZ game also missed the last minute or so - again fortunately the game was done by then. Also the Aussie commentator for the NZ game did my head in. Just kept shouting really loud every 30 seconds and I found it hard to understand what he was saying. However I must admit the commentary is better than the 3 million commentators that sky have for a SL game (which isn't saying much)

Can't blame Premier for the game running over time. It's not a bad idea to record the next programme if time's tight. I see you did that for the PNG-France game but not NZ-Samoa.

So you are no longer a Hillsborough Lad then ?

Whilst I slightly agree Griff, that sort of defeats the point of recording a programme. Fair enough if there had been extra time etc but the games were both 80 mins without any major stoppages.

Duggs I don't get it?

There were a fair few video ref stoppages. They add up. Games used to last 90 minutes from kick-off to final whistle. Now it's more like 110 minutes at best.

Speaking of video ref - what was that business on 58 mins in the England game ? They seemed to be deciding whether it was a knock on (10 metre scrum to England, 20 metres in) or touch (10 metre scrum to England, 20 metres in).

Hillsborough Lad, I presumed from your nickname that you live or used to live in Hillsborough and AFAIK Virgin is available in Hillsborough and the surrounding areas

I've had premier for a good while now and the amount of Rugby League that is on is worth the £10 a month alone there is loads of NRL on and the state of origin and when there's not much on they will put origin classics on

Bargain

Again though you can hardly blame the broadcasters for that.

And you clearly never had any rugby league games for playstation if Andrew Voss does your head in

Agree. Much better value than Sky. We cancelled our subscription ages ago.

Topically, the first half lasted over 50 mins last night.

Duggs - I see. Yes I don't live in Hillsborough anymore. Virgin is available in the area I currently live, but not in flats, and I live in a flat. Pah.

ESO - No I never had a Playstation, of any kind.

The point was more that you know roughly how long a game is going to last, so in the EPG it should have enough time at the end to cover the end of the game. I noticed last night's ran over by 10 minutes, although in fairness, there were a lot of video ref stoppages in that one.

Not great tonight though is it, game underway and no pictures...

We have got Pictures now but delayed coverage so hopeless if you want to bet in running by the way is this the biggest mismatch in terms of population in a sports match Cook Islands Pop 20,000 USA Pop around 317 Million !!!

Might be if they were both drawing their teams from residents.

But then the 20000 might well beat the 317m.