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Ron Manager

formerly Libertine
Joined
Jan 21, 2007
Messages
5,848
Location
Brisbane, Australia
This is an article about the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia. I've posted it on here because I think this is a worrying development for televised sport in general and football in particular. Ours is a sport that's run for TV by TV and don't be surprised if we have ad breaks during football matches before long.

Fuming Brisbane coach Wayne Bennett has accused rugby league officials of "tampering with the fabric of the game" after commercial breaks during Friday night's NRL television coverage forced stoppages to play.

While Bennett had no complaints with his side's 23-16 loss to North Queensland in a spectacular season-opener at Suncorp Stadium, he slammed a decision to stop play while host broadcaster Channel Nine showed ads to viewers.

"I had no idea," said Bennett when asked about the stoppages which Brisbane vice-captain Petero Civoniceva said "shocked" him.

"I hope that's the last we see of it," fumed Bennett.

"Of course it's worrying, every time they do that, they are playing with the fabric of the game."

"When you have the opposition down and on the rack, it gives them time to recover. An extra 30 or 40 seconds is a huge recovery time."

Civoniceva said when he questioned referee Steve Clark about what was going on, he was told: "We have to wait for an ad break".

"In a game of momentum, you take that away ... they get their gas back, it's a bit unfair," said Civoniceva, who added the pace of the game was incredibly intense for the first match of the season.

NRL chief executive David Gallop had bad news for Bennett after the game, confirming the stoppages would continue as part of an arrangement with Channel Nine, who televised two matches, including the Storm's narrow 18-16 win over the Tigers.

"It's something we need to monitor, but it's also something we need to accept because we're getting two games of footy on Friday nights now," said Gallop, in the Broncos dressing room within ear shot of Bennett.

"Our broadcasters need to be doing what they need to do to bring us two games of footy, so we just need to keep an eye on that for the next few weeks.

"It's something we've agreed to but we've also agreed to monitor it as well and that's what we'll do."

While Bennett implied he had not been told about the TV stoppages, Gallop believed they had been told it would happen.

"It concerns me if the coach didn't know about it, so I'll look into that."

Cowboys coach Graham Murray seemed to back Bennett's comments that the stoppages for TV ad breaks came out of the blue.

"We would have passed it onto the players if we were told," said Murray.

"It's probably just teething problems in the first week."

Thurston, who was the man-of-the-match featuring in all four of the Cowboys tries, said the stoppages worked against Brisbane when they were building momentum in the second half and got back to 16-16.

"They got a fair bit of momentum in the second half, and you just want to kick the ball of and try and rip back into them, it's a little annoying," said the Cowboys skipper.

Brisbane captain Darren Lockyer seemed perplexed at one point when he was about to kick the football and Clark told him to wait.
 
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