Quiet Time is Over

Network negotiations and Saturday's draft are the focus at the moment, this also means that the uneventful portion of the AFL year is now over and it gets busy again. In just 4 months the pre-season kicks off and our lives will once again be meaningful, get ready for a summer-long pre analysis of next season!

The papers have been gabbing on heaps about all the speculation to do with the upcoming draft, that's nothing new. Controversy has already reared its ugly head as the West Coast Eagles are denied moving a player into the senior rookie list, and Foxtel is all but out of the equation for television rights for 2007. So what does this mean? Well it only means that things are going normal (apart from no Fox Footy next year), however I can't help but think that perhaps footy is taking a huge step backwards by losing pay-tv rights.

Now I'm not a big advocate of sport being exclusive to pay-tv. I don't believe that every Australian family can afford it and those who say that they can, well then they've obviously never gone through a time in their lives where money has been tough, like in my family.

However I do believe that there should at least be SOME aussie rules on Foxtel and that there should be an entire channel devoted to the sport. Not only is this a step in the right direction for publicity, it gives that die-hard fan a channel that they can alway turn to and not be bored. However the absence of Fox Footy in 2007 is a massive step backwards for a sport that is still yet to take off internationally. However I do hope that it doesn't become globally accepted for a long long time, remember how the Americans screwed up by exporting baseball? They're not known as the best country for the sport anymore, which is why the US holds on very tightly to Grid Iron, any rugby playing country could easily surpass them in skill and endurance, especially since rugby is played minus all the protective gear. Not that I'm having a go at NFL or anything, I do like the sport and am a self-confessed Cowboys fan (I support any team from Texas in any sport).

But I digress, I do think that the AFL needs to intervene here and use some of their power to ensure that the partnership with Foxtel goes on, that Fox Footy is resurrected, and that mad footy fans such as I can get their dose of the great sport, even in the summer.

Since I am a dead-set critic of channel 10 and all their programming, I'm especially heated to know that they will continue with the rights. I do despise Eddie McGuire but at least channel 9 know how to treat sports and have produced some great commentary teams, (NRL, Cricket).

Channel 7, well I liked it when they had the exclusive rights for all those years, and let's face it, giving some live matches to community television is an awesome idea and I am a huge advocate of public broadcasting, however the fact is that not many homes at all in Perth can pick up Channel 31, so what does that mean for rural viewers? A nice clean kick in the shorts, that's what it means.

It's all messed up at this stage and it would be ideal to see all 8 games of each round shared between: 1 commercial network, 1 pay-tv station and 1 community station with a large reach. However this is not an ideal situation and certainly not a perfect world, therefore we have: 1 commercial network with Bruce McAvaney, 1 commercial network with a bunch of amateurs, and indecision still running rampant as to who the third stooge is going to be in this vaudevillian comedy of errors.

In any event, the quiet time is now over, the season is approaching. I know it only just ended, however time is fast and sooner or later the Ides of March approaches, the people will plot and hopefully it will be Anthony Demetriou frightfully stating: 'e tu brute!'