Thanks for that. 
Makes me wonder why they would show the Bledisloe Cup over the first half of the Adelaide vs Richmond match? Especially since they could have shown the AFL match first and let Fox show the rugby live instead?
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Here is some footage of Premier Sports Network’s coverage of a 1995 NBL game
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I guess is this is the first game done by FOX Sports
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If you’re ever curious where Channel 9 got their Friday Night Football intro that Billy Thorpe sung around 1995 until the end of the millennium. It’s from the film The Last Boy Scout.
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19 years ago today (July 22, 2001), Essendon and North Melbourne played arguably one of the greatest AFL matches in modern history, when the Bombers came from 69 points down in the second quarter, to beat the Kangaroos by 12 points. This was Seven’s coverage at that time with Anthony Hudson and Craig Hutchison calling the game.
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So good that it looks like 7 replayed the entire match the following evening with an intro from Anthony Hudson.
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Would have aired following The Weakest Link in Melbourne (or sometime after) because at the end, Hudson says “Good Morning” and a promo for Home and Away is shown touting it to be “tonight at 7:00” (the “tonight” being the following Tuesday).
Found this match on youtube, must’ve been during the Atlanta Olympics due to the commentators.
What i’m really interested in though is from about 2:08:00 onwards which cuts into some afl panel shows. There’s the Thursday and Sunday footy shows and two from Sports AFL. Does anyone know anything about them or other Sports AFL ones? Barrassi and Platten (guest) aside, I don’t recognise anyone from the first one. Mcguire (no idea he was on Sports AFL), Leigh Matthews and Robert Walls (as a guest?) on the second, called ‘Football Feedback’.
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The first Sports AFL show was that Footy Focus? Ian Cover as host, Barassi, Steve McPherson (Super) and David Rhys-Jones on the panel.
Second one is Footy Feedback, pretty sure Peter Donegan was the regular host, perhaps he was off in Atlanta?
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Note the FOXTEL logo on the Richmond banner, they might have been (1) club sponsor at the time (2) ambush marketing given the game was telecast on rival pay TV broadcaster Optus Vision’s Sports AFL. The AFL also rejected Galaxy’s planned sponsorship of the Fitzroy Football Club because of the AFL’s links to Optus at the time.
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Who were Optus Vision’s AFL commentators and how did they show games
Optus Vision had a Sports AFL channel which showed some exclusive matches. Peter Donegan called some matches.
They went with the single commentator style with 2 or more experts. Peter Donegan was the main caller and they had Peter Daicos perched behind the goals at one end and the forward expert and would show long passages of play from behind the goals live, a move 7 would copy with Peter McKenna, behind the goal vision was saved for finals and only replays. I think Andy Maher was on the boundary.
Bear in mind they only had one or two exclusive games a weekend on Saturday and Sunday afternoons live against the gate from Melbourne. As a result, the ABC’s VFA broadcast was brough forward and hour to get a head start.
If I remember anything else I’ll update here.
Update: so a bit of a poke around on YouTube has reminded me that in 96 they used Channel Seven’s coverage for their live games, In 97 some matches used Seven’s commentators but Sports AFL graphics.
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Late reply, but yeah I believe they did. They even showed an hour of highlights from the Melbourne-based game at 5pm when there weren’t double headers on Sundays, like Seven Melbourne did.
I thought it was Craig Kelly that was perched behind the goals for much of Sports AFL’s run of exclusive telecasts. I don’t remember Peter Daicos doing it back then from what I’ve seen on YouTube. I do remember when he was a co-commentator alongside Peter Donegan when C7 Sport televised the VFL on Monday nights from Waverley Park in 2000, and in special comments when Andy Maher started calling with Donegan for the Sunday morning VFL games at Kardinia Park and Princes Park in 2001.
Drew Morphett called several Sports AFL matches early in 1997 before Peter Donegan took over for the rest of its run. I think Dermott Brereton in special comments was usually the host of the telecasts.
I noticed that in 1998, Seven was putting in its own commentary over the Sports AFL vision for at least some of its games, so for example, in the case of Jason Dunstall’s soccer off the ground against the Bulldogs to bring up his 5th goal in the 1st quarter at Waverley, Terry Wheeler was heard calling the goal for Seven, while Donegan called it for Sports AFL.
Now you mention it it may have been him, definitely recall his involvement.
Given that Drew Morphett was a host when he did games on Seven, makes me wonder why Dermott Brereton in special comments was usually the host instead of Drew.
I don’t think that Peter Donegan ever was a host on matches(could be wrong)
Don’t recall. There’s not a lot of material from Sports AFL on YouTube.