BYE BYE SHITANTA SPORTS

I'll openly admit that I was thoroughly delighted to see the demise of the UK arm of this utterly shithouse Pay-TV broadcaster, alongside their even more-shithouse customer service operation.

I was never best pleased they'd purchased the broadcasting rights to the NRL and Origin games a couple of years ago because that meant I had to shell out an extra £15 per month on top of my overly-expensive monthly subscription to Sky Sports.

Setanta began by broadcasting 3 live NRL games a week and that included pre-game coverage from Fox Sports Australia or Channel Nine whose presentation is generally far superior to the usual boofhead in a studio that Sky UK used to trot out pretending to know a lot about Australian Rugby League when the trotted-out boofhead in question actually knew feck all and was incapable of discussing any aspect of the games broadcast beyond applying the usual cliches and fatuous comments.

What pissed me off the most was being offered a deal by Setanta to subscribe, which consisted of agreeing to a minimum 12 month contract where the first 3 months were £10 pcm, followed by the remainder of the contract to be charged at £15 pcm. I was politely assured that this was a fantastic deal. I should have known better though. Within a couple of weeks of signing up to Setanta, they suddenly began offering their service at £9.99 pcm with no minimum contract.

I was on the blower fairly quickly to register my disapproval at the package I was on and I politely asked to be switched to a no minimum contract at £9.99 pcm as a gesture of goodwill on their part in return for my long-term and satisfied customer subscription status. Their customer service turned around and basically said 'Tough shit! You signed up to a 12 month contract at the terms and prices earlier specified. We intend to hold you to that contract!' I then banged on about my customer rights and the 14 day cooling off period where I could change my mind about their service but they were very quick to point out I'd subscribed 16 days ago, so again 'Tough shit!'.

At that point, I gave in. I'd lost the argument. They'd got me! However, it was hardly the kind of customer service response that was likely to endear me to the company and so I agreed that I'd continue to fulfil my 12 month contact, but I also pointed out to them that at the end of that 12 month contract, I would be looking forward to ditching the bastards for good. Twelve months later, I diligently waited for Setanta to take the final 12th monthly direct debit from my bank account and then immediately cancelled the direct debit payments. What followed were incessant phone calls and threatening letters from Setanta claiming that my direct debit was no longer working and that I owed them money, to which I continued to maintain that I'd fulfilled my 12 month contract, that they could go forth and multiply, and that I look forward to the day when they go bust. I'm not quite sure how I could owe them several months subscription payments anyhow, since they'd switched me off within 2 weeks of the direct debit being cancelled.

In more recent times, Setanta's coverage of the NRL games had become pretty ordinary and often reduced to just the solitary one game per week broadcast, and without any of the previous pre-game presentations. Edited highlights of German Bundesliga soccer games from the previous week were considered more important to broadcast instead of a live NRL game.

Well they have gone bust now and my opinion is?

Good bleedin' riddance and not a moment too soon! :-)

THE DEPRESSING STATE OF AUSTRALIAN RL CULTURE!

It's been quite some time since I've posted anything on this blog, mainly because I've been too busy with other stuff and also because I spent the best part of last month down under in Australia and New Zealand on my jollies! I'm back now though :-) I make the long trip down under at least once a year (but usually twice) for my annual (or bi-annual) fix of some combo of NRL, State of Origin, Anzac Test and Qld Cup fixtures. Last year I attended the RLWC instead of the NRL Finals.

I travelled down under last month and the idea of attending as many Rugby League games as I could conceivably fit in was no longer to be regarded as an essential and integral part of my holiday itinerary. I decided to spend time in Melbourne followed by Auckland rather than attend the Anzac Test in Brisbane. I didn't even bother arranging the timing of my stays in Melbourne and Auckland to coincide with a Storm or Warriors home fixture. I did make a little effort to book a two night stay in Sydney in the hope that I might cop an opportunity to attend a Monday night NRL game there but it didn't work out because the Storm V Raiders fixture got the Monday night schedule nod in that particular round of fixtures instead. Did I care? Was I bovvered? In short... no. I attended just one fixture over the best part of a whole month down under, an NRL local derby clash between the Brisbane Broncos and Gold Coast Titans, and that was only because a bunch of my Aussie mates wanted to go.

Rugby League was never out of the news whilst I was there. It occupied more than the usual reams of column inches in all the newspapers and it was invariably the top news item on every TV or radio channel news bulletin or notable current affairs programme. Unfortunately, not much of it was about the game itself but depressingly more about the seedier and sleazy underbelly of the sport and what high-profile people in the game get up to in their spare time, which quite frankly is nothing to be proud of at all.

The news was full of allegations of sexual assault on a 17 year old young female by the NRL's current marketing pin-up boy Brett Stewart. The NRL had to suspend their main season 2009 advertising campaign because Stewart featured prominently in it! Then there was the complete and utter implosion of the Cronulla Sharks club where it emerged that a number of their players had indulged in group sex with a young 19 year old female in a Christchurch motel back in 2002. This included one of the most high-profile and highly paid of RL media personalities who played for the Sharks back then. One of their current players then tested positive for a banned substance (I'm surprised he had the time to imbibe or inject anything given he was busy attempting to sue the pants off his former club for wrongful dismissal unless he was paid compensation of $100k), their halfback had been suspended for alcohol-fuelled, off-field indiscretions, their skipper was sacked from the captaincy role due to racist remarks made to an opposition player during a game, their sponsors were pulling the plug on their financial support in droves, and just to cap it all off, their CEO had punched a female employee of the club and urged another female employee of the club to give him a good spanking! If ever a club epitomised the brainless, boozy, macho, misogynistic, racist, rotten-to-the-core culture of the game in Australia, it was Cronulla. Given the current climate, Willie Mason being caught on camera (above) having a leak outside a nightclub ought to be regarded as nothing more than light relief.

With all this crap unfolding whilst I was over there, alongside the memory of other sleazy incidents that had taken place at Coffs Harbour and Fortitude Valley, I'd simply had a gutful and lost my appetite for turning up to any game down under.

I very much doubt the culture of RL is much different among clubs and players in England. The only difference is that incidents don't get reported or scrutinised like they do in Australia due to the much lower profile the game receives from the media in the UK. After all, it didn't take long for a well-known and highly-capped GB and England international to go looking for sleazy, extra-curricular activities whilst on tour with the RLWC squad last year. He even had the testicular fortitude (one wonders if he needed the boost of any help there?) to organise it all on Facebook prior to his arrival in Australia. He may have been judged a 10 out of 10 between the sheets, but his on-field performances in the RLWC most definitely rated no more than a 3 or a 4, which pretty much correspond to his ordinary match ratings throughout the rest of his highly overrated international career.