Just to clear up a little bit about the rugby rights history from my equally dodgy memory, Seven had winter wallaby matches from at least 1996. I don’t have much recollection of anything before the 1995 World Cup.
Bruce McAvaney was host from 02-06 (when 7 didn’t have the AFL) as seen here. Dan Crowley and Tim Horan calling with Gordon Bray too. Interesting that 7 presented the whole thing from NZ.
They kept those rights up until 2010, with Matt White hosting post 2006. You can see some of their work in 2010 here. I don’t know who hosted pre 2002, but I would guess it was Bray.
The score ticker in the 2010 video seems to go back to 2006 and looks like a forerunner to what 7 used for it’s AFL coverage from 2007.
9 got the rights in 2011 and was hosted by Ken Sutcliffe from a studio (presumably Sydney?) with just Tim Sheridan at the ground. I assume they took fox’s commentary of the match. They also aired matches in 2012.
In 2013 Ten picked up the rights and still have them today. It meant Gordon Bray was working on Aus TV again.
In terms of the Spring tours, they’ve been on 7, 10 and SBS as far as I remember.
As mentioned, the 1995 World Cup was a 10 affair.
The 1999 World Cup was shown on 7. The host broadcaster was ITV and they copped a lot of criticism over in the UK at the time for their efforts.
The 2003 WC was on 7 as well. I assume they were the host broadcaster. McAvaney hosted a fair bit of it. There was also ‘The Cream with Roy and HG’ which aired after the final match of the night.
The 2007 WC was on 10. Someone mentioned remembering Bill Woods hosting matches, and whilst he may or may not have done so in the pre 7 days in the 90s, he definitely hosted 10’s coverage from France for the 07 WC. The coverage was weird. As 7 still had regular rugby rights until 2010, Gordon Bray wasn’t available for 10 and ditto with Greg Clark and Fox. It meant they went with an untried caller in poet Rupert McCall and ex wallabies Ben Tune and Ben Darwin as match commentators. None of those three have gone on to have any real career in rugby broadcasting since. Here’s a snippet of their coverage.
The 2011 and 2015 World Cups were done by 9. You can see who was involved and which games 9/ GEM covered here.. You can see here it was significantly more matches than the 2019 World Cup which 10 showed.
Should also be noted that fox have been showing most, if not all of this stuff too.
I vaguely recall 7 dabbling with Super Rugby back in the late 90’s, but this could very well be a figment of my imagination. Would be great if someone knew.
Also George Gregan wouldn’t captain the wallabies until the early 2000’s so I’d say he was man of the match if he’s on the microphone at the SFS in 1994.
Probably a few errors in there but generally that’s what’s happened post 1995.