And they made sure everyone can see that they were at the ground
Australiaās best race caller Matt Hill is joining Fox Sports from next season to commentate on AFL matches as the network transitions to covering all nine games each round ā rather than sharing the telecasts with Channel 7.
(thatās the entirety of the piece on it - know heād already done some)
Since heās busy on Saturdays with the races, the easy assumption would be heād be calling the Thursday and/or Friday games along with his current Sunday calls.
Agreed here, i could see him and Huddo doing FNF.
I definitely think Matt Hill will call on Sundays, but I just cannot see him being given the lucrative Thursday/Friday night slots at this stage.
I wouldnāt be surprised if Fox decide to roster x2 play-by-play callers for each match (with the exception of one for matches in Perth - Adam Papalia).
This would require 17 play-by-plays across each weekend, which would almost certainly mean Fox need to hire 1-2 new commentators.
I reckon Fox should poach Luke Darcy and offer him the lucrative Friday night slot. Darce and Howie could call Friday nights together - they already have good chemistry on MMM.
Wonder if Matt Hill will still call the Melbourne Cup for TV (FTA), now on Nine? Itāll be interesting with Tabcorp and Sky now controlling things, at least in part.
Please donāt, Darcy is a D grade commentator.
I reckon Fox should try and get Jason Bennett back rather than Luke Darcy.
Surely they stick with Hill - heās by far the best in the business.
Seven learnt that lesson in 2002 with Wayne Wilson.
Will adding that extra layer in costs really improve subscriptions? They already have people who prefer Fox or no ads during play subscribing as all matches of the round are shown live.
I think they will do a mixture of 2 & some matches with 1 like they are doing this year. 95% of Saturday twilight has been Huddo being the only caller
I donāt think they need to hire more people since they already have enough play by play callers with their AFL & AFLW commentators.
Huddo, Howard, Russell, Underwood, Hill, Papalia, Montagna. Add Whateley thats 8
Then use Jack Heverin, Jess Webster, Ben Waterworth who does AFLW for Fox.
I think Fox has enough callers contracted to them without needing to poach someone.
Whateley has never commentated for Fox
Last weekends Sunday Herald Sun suggested that Whateley will be calling for Fox from 2025.
Thatās why I said add him & that gives Fox with 8 main callers and they can rotate some of their AFLW callers if they need
Is he not employed by the VRC rather than the networks?
Fox Footy should get Matt Granland to call for them next year, he is a good commentator at 3AW and before that SEN.
Agree, but feel Granland sort of taken over a bit on AW, to the detriment of their other, some long-time talent, just IMO
I think all Victorian race callers are contracted by the vision providers TRP - Thoroughbred Racing Productions
I canāt see Fox moving to 2 PBP commentators per match when they donāt have that for all games now. The only reason they are doing it now for selected games is to keep all the commentators busy while they only have 5 or less matches a week.
Next year, if Hudson and Russell call 2 games each like they do now, plus 1 from Papalia, 1 from Matt Hill, 1 from Mark Toward and 1 from Kelli Underwood, they only have 2 more games to cover.
Gerard Whately could do 1 of those (perhaps Thursday or Friday night) and Leigh Montagna could also do a game or other commentators could do extra games (Hudson and Russell might do a Friday night as well and drop their radio commitments)