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Israel v Northern Ireland
davelovesleeds
Posts: 22,770 Forum Member
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Is this match been shown anyway. I've looked at the EPG, Irish FA website and the web but it appears to be ignored complelty. I know NI can't progress but thought fans would have like to have seen it.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-24543128
If they weren't interested in showing it, sell them on to a broadcaster that would have shown it and by the noise the BBC are making, they'd have shown it
I don't know why they wouldn't be interested in showing it, though, given they showed the Azerbaijan game on Friday which hardly had any more riding on it and was probably in an even worse timeslot. Given they didn't start the coverage of the Wales match until 7.55 it would have been easy for them to have shown it before that. So this is a bit of a mystery.
Sky Sports are a terribly unaccountable broadcaster, though, they never seem to respond to criticism.
Supporting NI is a waste of energy and one would be better of doing something more constructive with your time and money.
Let me start with apologising to you for any embarrassment I and other Northern Ireland fans have caused you in the past. If certainly was not our intention. We probably presumed that being Belfast born and bred you would have understood the NI humour and realised that we were not being serious when everyone of us stated that we were better than Brazil.
With regards to supporting NI being a waste of energy, you are entitled to your opinion but in international football you don't really have a choice of who to support without looking like some sort of glory hunter
Anyhow .... even though I have responded I'm not sure what relevance any of this has to the thread in hand.
If the match is not broadcast then I feel it should be on that YouTube channel but obviously that creates more work for FIFA to check each match is being broadcast. To me, this situation sounds like a one-off mess-up by Sky.
Sorry to hear you feel that way. During the Billy Bingham era NI certainly did well in the 1980s. And more recently, under Lawrie Sanchez, NI topped the Euro table and beat England, Spain and Switzerland. There was even a book written about it, and if Sanchez hadn't gone to Fulham who knows what glories might have come.
I think it is incredibly unlikely that Sky had the rights without realising it.
Although the rights sold by various unions are in many cases bundled there have definitely been other occasions in the past when Sky has shown some away qualifiers for Wal/NI/ROI but not all of them.
Not all the unions bundle together or with the same agent.
The BBC may "believe" Sky had the rights but I doubt they can know for sure - short of the Israeli FA or the agency actually saying explicitly that Sky had the rights I don't see how anyone can know for sure.
Sky is running its own business - it will know what rights it holds and in the absence of any other info I can't see any basis for doubting Sky's statement that they didn't have the rights.
If the suspicion is that Sky knew they had the rights but didn't want to show the game then it begs the question as to why they showed the Azerbaijan game (as Steve said earlier).
It doesn't make any sense for them not to have shown it on cost grounds given that they show 11 non-British CL games every CL match round.
One of thé best replies i have ever read.....
Its very hard to see NI qualifying from pot 5 which is a pitty, would love for the two countries to be drawn together.
As for NI, the lower the pot the better, considering they have more trouble with the little teams than the big teams lol
Ha it is amazing really that NI give most big teams a match but cant do anything at all against lower teams... I think they are suffering from that old Irish problem of loving being underdogs... The only thing that won't qualify you for tournaments.