Venting my frustration
As you may already know, I am a rugby geek.
And with it being rugby world cup time I should be very excited right? well truth is I’m not, in fact I’m pretty pissed off!.
Yes, in the days leading up to the opening game I was counting down the days and I even got 2 dozen Tui and a dozen Grolsch to stock the fridge up with and I was absolutely fizzing come that friday night.
But after the opening match I saw my hopes of enjoying the cup evaporate.
In the advertising campaigns before the cup there were multiple channels going on about “live coverage” and “all 48 games” and lets not forget the term “free to air” but it turns out these statements are evidently unrelated.
Imagine my pissadointment (cool word huh?) when I went to check out the games the next day on the supposed free coverage only to find out if you want to watch the games LIVE, you have to have sky!.
Yes all the games are free to air on either TV1, Maori channel and Te Reo but only the All Blacks games and the “finals” are live. All other games are delayed or replayed and sometimes they are not on until late at night (I’m not staying up until 1.45am on a work night to watch Scotland play Romania!) or in some cases not until the following afternoon!.
And once the game has been shown “free to air” there are no more replays, you get one shot at seeing it and if you miss out tough shit!.
And even though there are multiple channels showing the replays, they all seem to be on around the same time, showing the same game and not always shown in the order they were played. Its weird watching a night game followed by a day game from earlier that day!.
And to piss me off further, the TV listings for the matches just say “Rugby World Cup 2011″ and nothing about which teams are playing!, how stupid is that? I mean for F’s sake how hard can it be just to put ”Rugby World Cup 2011″ and who is playing in the description? or maybe even “RWC2011 France Vs Japan” or something like that?.
Now here was the biggest kick in the guts to me so far, and it came during the opening match.
After the teams sang the anthems and the Tongans did “Sipi Tau” and the All Blacks did “Ka mate Ka mate” they cut to a commercial break, for Heineken beer, the official beer on the rugby world cup.
They actually delayed the start of the game for a ad break. WHAT THE F…? I will never buy Heineken or drink it ever again!. The blatant commercialism of a once great tournament has ruined it totally for me. That and it cost me $97+ for a decent covered seat at “Stadium Taranaki” (its Yarrows Stadium for F’s sake!) to watch Ireland Vs USA, which was lucky it was covered because it rained for about 90% of the time I was there.
So there you have it, my Rugby World Cup experience has been ruined by blatant commercialism, misleading advertising and total over pricing.
Venting Complete.
Laz out.
At ease.
21
Sep
Grumpy old man.
rather be a grumpy old man than a mincer like you ; – P
Haha. So now you have a job I’m a mincer instead of a richer? Why all the hostility, Larry?
As a complete aside, my phone saw fit to try and replace hostility with virility. Too funny not to share.