On several occasions last weekend Australians were pinching themselves as, after 160-odd years on the fringes, women players were finally front and centre on planet Aussie rules.
On Seven and Foxtel, the historic first week of the AFLW introduced a cast of instant TV stars, with the likes of Darcy Vescio, Erin Phillips and Chelsea Randall joining the more publicised Moanna Hope and Tayla Harris in the limelight and providing something compelling and new whilst also saving old-fashioned football lovers from the usual pre-season drudgery of fantasy league chat and NAB Challenge yawnfests.
This week’s second round of AFLW kicks off on Friday with the Bulldogs and Adelaide (Fox Footy, 7:30pm), but the pick of the games might be Saturday’s encounter between Melbourne and Collingwood (Seven, 7:30pm), which features two sides desperate for a win after misfires in round one and the aforementioned Hope coming off a quiet league debut.
Last week’s telecasts set a decent template, striking a neat balance between acknowledging the overwhelming sense of history and respecting the intensity of the contest at hand, though play-by-play commentary was almost non-existent in the rain-lashed encounter between Melbourne and Brisbane. “These are tough conditions no matter what the standard,” said Fox Footy’s Danny Frawley, going on a bit longer than necessary, as per custom.
For the most part – and bar one particularly concerning moment in which a player was described by Seven’s Nigel Carmody as having been “dismembered” in a tackle – the likes of Frawley, Josh Gibson, Mark Ricciuto and the other blokes involved avoided the obvious pitfalls, while main caller Jason Bennett was superb in the Dockers-Bulldogs game.
As per the on-field action the outright stars of the first round of broadcasting were women we hadn’t heard from before. Western Bulldogs skipper Katie Brennan was particularly sharp in keeping viewers up to speed with the strengths and weaknesses of each player and likewise Carlton’s Lauren Arnell for the Sunday game.
Otherwise there was a pleasing familiarity about it all; football commentary cliches are not gender-specific, and neither was virtually any other element of the games, to the point that three players fell victim of the match review panel in the opening weekend alone. Women’s footy truly has arrived.
Interesting here is the implications for other sports jockeying for TV viewers in the period between the end of the Big Bash schedule and the start of the men’s NRL/AFL seasons. The AFLW will feature one free-to-air game per week on Seven – a Saturday night national slot from here on in – and three on Fox Footy. That commercial network airtime should provide a bonanza.
The season opener was a clear ratings winner, and if things stay at the same level – which is plausible – somewhere in the region of 600,000 will tune in to the FTA games and 70-150k for the Fox Sports ones, which is still pretty good going. Waterlogged as they were, the Dees and Lions provided Foxtel’s second most-watched show on Sunday.
Elsewhere in TV land, if you’re looking for a palate-cleansing return to the boorish megalomania of men’s sport, unfortunately there is no local boxing this weekend to match the Mundine-Green travesty of last. Instead we look to the still-rumbling controversy surrounding the decision of fight fans and rising folk heroes Darren Sharpe and Brett Hevers to live-stream footage of that $59.95 pay-per-view bout to hundreds of thousands of freeloading fans via Facebook live.
Both men face $60,000 fines and up to five years in jail, and the situation has hardly endeared the Murdoch-owned media corporation to Joe Public. Maybe Mundine and Green could chip in some kind of contribution from that $10 million purse they fought for.
Trumpeted loudly, well-attended on opening night and subject to some very generous media attention owing to the presence of Usain Bolt is Saturday’s Nitro athletics (Seven, 7pm), a new twist on an old sport which is billed as the Twenty20 of athletics but might struggle to hold the attention of its million-plus Australian TV viewers when the Jamaican slinks off into retirement.
Australian cricket fans uninspired by the first Test between India and Bangladesh (Thursday-Monday, Fox Sports 5) or Saturday’s Sri Lanka-South Africa ODI (Fox Sports 2, 2:30am) will have to content themselves with the thought that Michael and Kyly Clarke are probably enjoying “sexy time” with their massage candles.
NBL basketball (Friday, Fox Sports 3, 9:30pm) is now a week away from finals time. A far slicker TV production now on Fox Sports (one game per week is shown on SBS), it battles two major perception problems: the view that it’s not as slick as its NBA counterpart (which is true of literally every other basketball league on earth, der) and that it ain’t what it used to be itself in the glory days of Andrew Gaze, Warwick Giddey and Leroy Loggins, which is getting a little tiresome.
Having Euro-stepped their way past the ghost of Bruce Bolden, the players are doing their part. In cahoots with the league, who foot some of the bill, Foxtel are doing the broadcasting part by showing every game live and making an increasingly decent fist of presenting it as something enticing after a shaky start.
One gripe: pandering to AFL players sitting in the courtside seating probably isn’t the surest route to credibility, nor perhaps is letting them loose on sideline reporting duties. It’s good gear though and agnostics should tune in for the finals, starting 16 February, or perhaps just for Steve Carfino’s bons mots. “It’s like the flies are on crack,” he said amid last weekend’s heatwave in Adelaide. You don’t get that in the NBA.
