Dennis Cometti was also at the Olympics
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If you’re talking about the Sydney Olympics, then that occurred after the AFL/NRL seasons had finished. Both were brought forward by a month to accommodate the Games.
Handful of 1996 regular commentators remained doing play by play. Ian Robertson, Peter McKenna, Kevin Bartlett, Terry Wheeler, Russell Morris, Malcolm Blight all stayed. Gerard Healy stepped up tp a PbP role. The likes of Don Scott, Ross Glendinning and Leigh Matthews would handle the bulk of the special comments, with Neil Kerley and John Russo stepping in from their regular roles (boundary and 4th umpire) to bolster ranks. Some commentators continued to do both PbP and special comments roles on the same weekend.
Non regulars that I’ve seen YouTube vision of include Ian Major (did a Richmond vs Hawthorn game at Princes Park), Bernie Quinlan (Fitzroy vs Footscray) and Rex Hunt (some Friday Night games including North Melbourne vs Melbourne). There was NO Saturday Night games for 2 weeks (Rounds 17/18) with the Olympic coverage beginning in prime time. Main commentators returned for Round 19.
I’d like to think that for the Tokyo Olympics, Bruce, Hamish, Basil and maybe James Brayshaw may be sent to Tokyo to cover the Games for Seven. That would leave the likes of BT, Jason Bennett and Nigel Carmody to cover the AFL during this period.
Rounds 19-21 are the affected rounds.
Most of the above also applies to the 1992 season during the Barcelona games, with the notable addition of Ted Whitten coming out of retirement to do PbP for a few games. Here’s one of those games:
Doesn’t Luke Darcy call PbP as well?
Some other options they could use:
*Mark Readings to call a game or two out of Perth, since presumably Seven won’t be doing any WAFL games
*Take inspiration from the EJ example above and get a past caller to make a one-off comeback (such as Dennis Cometti for a Perth game, or maybe even Peter Landy since his appearance on the Front Bar was so well received)
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during the 96 olympics, Saturday matches were shown live?
Ted would have still been the lead commentator then with K Rock so no stranger to calling the play, but first appearance on television for several years.
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Still had the 6PM replay on Saturday Night into Melbourne (Blight deputised as host) with all the highlights, although there was a game between Brisbane and West Coast played on a Saturday Afternoon whose status into Melbourne I’m not sure of (it would have been live into Perth and slightly delayed if not live into Brisbane). There was a live game into Darwin (where I lived in 1996) on Saturday and Sunday afternoons as was the normal schedule.
was seven still doing Sunday Double Header in 96?
Bit of an addendum to this looks like Sports Australia (which would become C7 Sport) broadcast the 1997 Australian Grand Prix and took commentary from Nine (Murray Walker/Alan Jones and probably Martin Brundle for qualifying and race) but had their own hosts:
Can anyone recognize the voices (not Walker/Jones)? Did they broadcast any other races?
10 years ago 7 showed the Australian Open on delay in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide during the night sessions causing fan outrage on Twitter.
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Very familiar voice but can’t quite put my finger on it. There appears to be a brief shot of them at the end of the second video of can can freeze at the right time to get a face.
And they also cut off from the Serena Williams vs Sam Stosur match time go to the news on the east coast.
Apparently there was no direct telecast into Melbourne of the Brisbane-West Coast game. Instead, Seven telecast a Tri-Nations rugby union game between Australia and New Zealand played on the same afternoon at Lang Park in Brisbane. Same thing happened in Tasmania on Southern Cross. Southern Cross still aired delayed second half telecasts of the match of the day during the 1996 Olympics. Both aired Sunday games live during this time including the double-header of Sydney-Melbourne and West Coast-Essendon in Round 18.
I might have aired in Perth…
Yeah I think the Brisbane-West Coast game would have aired live in Perth. Just found out on further research that, according to the SMH weekend TV guide of the time (including Brisbane listings), the game was televised in Brisbane immediately after the live rugby union telecast for an hour from 4.15 to 5.15, didn’t say whether they were highlights or a live or slightly delayed second half, but that was when Brisbane viewers got to see that game on Seven.
Interestingly, most of NSW (including Sydney) apparently didn’t get any AFL telecasts at all in Round 17 with the Olympics going on, not even the Swans’ away game against Freo at Subi on Sunday.
This also happened:
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That would make sense then. But wouldn’t the Lions-Eagles match be at night?
I’m kind of surprised that Seven would telecast a Tri-Nations rugby union game between Australia and New Zealand rather than AFL.
From 2007 to the early 2010s, there were 2 NRL games on Friday night. Nine aired both games. But I wanna know about is, sometimes there were Friday night games in NZ.
2007:
R15: Warriors v Panthers
2008:
R13: Warriors v Rabbitohs
2009:
R14: Warriors v Knights
2010:
R25: Warriors v Broncos
2011:
R18: Warriors v Titans
R19: Warriors v Bulldogs
Did Nine air these games or Fox?
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Nine aired all those Warriors games that you mentioned in the 9:30pm timeslot. In all cases it was a delayed telecast (started at 6:30pm AEDT in real time)
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