It is a very bad thing. Lawry is superb.

Ireland v Italy

Presenter: Gabby Logan
With: Keith Wood & Martin Castrogiovanni
Commentators: Andrew Cotter & Philip Matthews
Reporters: Jill Douglas & Luke Fitzgerald

England v Wales

Presenter: John Inverdale
With: Jeremy Guscott, Jonathan Davies & Lawrence Dallaglio
Commentators: Eddie Butler & Brian Moore
Analyst: Andy Nicol
Reporters: Sonya McLaughlin & Colin Charvis

Scotland v France

Presenter: John Inverdale
With: Jeremy Guscott, Andy Nicol & Thomas Castaignède
Commentators: Andrew Cotter & Jonathan Davies
Analyst: Matt Dawson
Reporters: Jill Douglas & Chris Patterson

He's good at the role he fills (i.e. the 'in your face' style of commentary) but I prefer a calmer, more considered, less in the moment style and so don't really connect with Lawry, or many of the Channel Nine guys for that matter.

I just feel that Lawry, Nicholas, Taylor, Greig and Healy all try and commentate in pretty much the same way. All of them (oddly considering Nicholas and Greig's heritage) like to big up any Australian, particularly if their name is David Warner, whether or not they do well or not, whilst judging opposition players as useless or past it just on the basis of one tour. The calls to drop a man who broke a world record (Sehwag) in his last one-day series annoy me greatly and I'm not even an India fan. In this sense they suffer greatly from their inexplicable lack of a commentator from the touring team (other than Ian Smith from NZ and Nicholas/Greig when they play England), even within such a large team.

Slater and Tom Moody are the best of the younger guys but still can't analyse things as perceptively as the likes of Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Ramiz Raja, Tony Cozier and many others around the world.

Chappell says some things of value but is at times very old fashioned Aussie in the way he sees things, and comes across as abrasive and unwelcoming.

Meanwhile, James Brayshaw adds nothing of note.

Overall, Channel Nine have dropped behind Sky, Supersport and the TWI/Sky West Indian production in the quality of their commentary in my opinion and it would be nice to see some fresh faces next season. That could mean the end for Lawry and Chappell though.

Six Nations

Wales v Italy- John Inverdale presents. With commentary by Alastair Eykyn and Jonathan Davies, and analysis from Shane Williams and Jeremy Guscott.

Ireland v Scotland- Presented by Gabby Logan, with commentary by Andrew Cotter and Phillip Matthews and analysis from Keith Wood and Andy Nicol.

RBS 6 Nations - RTE Sport (RTE Two & RTE Two HD)
Saturday - Live from the Aviva Stadium

Presenter: Tom McGurk
WIth: George Hook, Brent Pope & Shane Horgan
Commentators:
Ireland v Italy - Hugh Cahill & Ralph Keyes
England v Wales - Ryle Nugent & Frankie Sheahan

Sunday - Scotland v France

Presenter: Tom McGurk
WIth: Donal Lenihan, Brent Pope & Conor O'Shea
Commentators: George Hamilton & Tony Ward

Do RTE cover all/most of the 6 nations studio wise from the grounds, similar to BBC?


Also does anyone know what the artist / song title is of the BBC's 6 nations 2012 theme music?

http://up.metropol247.co.uk/pakokels...NS%20THEME.mp3

Pakokelso - RTE cover all the matches from their studios in Dublin, including Irelands away matches but the Irish home matches are presented from a studio inside the Aviva Stadium.

Therefore on saturday they presented all day from the Aviva Stadium but on Sunday they presented from the RTE studios

Ok thanks, I presume all the commentaries are done from the respective stadiums? (i.e not offtube)

The commentators are at the stadium for most of the matches, RTE always do the studio presentation from home but their commentators go to the matches, for instance in the Champions League they show their commentators in vision at the start of the program and Frankie Sheahan showed a picture of himself and George Hamilton wrapped up at Twickenham a couple of weeks ago on twitter

Six Nations

France v England- John Inverdale presents. With commentary by Eddie Butler and Brian Moore, and analysis from Jeremy Guscott, Thomas Castaignede and Jonathan Davies.

It seems to be this, although it sounds a bit different (from 3.40)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkqWwmDg_M

You said it all for me. I mean Lawry? Superb? He makes Ian Botham appear neutral.

That's the one, thanks!

Channel 4 have today announced the presenting lineup for the 2012 Paralympics and it is a mix of experienced broadcasters and newcomers and 50% of the presenters and reporters in the line-up will be disabled;
[LIST][*]Clare Balding & Ade Adepitan - will host peak time live coverage.[*]Adam Hills - will host the peak evening highlights show[*]Rick Edwards - also plays a key role in the presenter line-up Jonathan Edwards joins Channel 4 for the games[*]Jon Snow will anchor the channel's coverage of the Paralympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies.[*]Kelly Cates & Georgie Bingham also join as presenters[*]Sonja McLaughlan & Iwan Thomas also join the Channel 4 team[*]Paralympic middle-distance runner Danny Crates[*]Former Paralympic swimmer Giles Long[/LIST]
Other faces for the games on Channel 4 are from their disabled talent search in 2010, these are;[LIST][*]Irish presenter Daráine Mulvihill[*]Former Royal Marine Arthur Williams,[*]Former Paralympic swimmer Rachael Latham[*]Sports reporter and wheelchair basketball player Jordan Jarrett-Bryan[*]Former carpenter Martin Dougan[*]Researcher Liam Holt[*]Sports journalist Alex Brooker.[/LIST]
Channel 4 will clear its schedules across the network for the eleven days of the Games to commit more than 150 hours of coverage and news on the commentary teams will follow in the future

The whole press release can be found here;
http://www.channel4.com/info/press/n...resenting-team

Thanks for posting those details Sporter. I think everyone was expecting Ade Adepitan to be involved and I'm pleased he is; he has a nice manner and was very good from what I saw of him on Channel 5's NBA coverage.

Pleasantly surprised Georgie Bingham will be involved. She's done very well on talkSPORT since joining the station last year and has impressed when presenting live football on there, notably getting to anchor their live coverage of the North London derby and the Carling Cup Final at the weekend.

Adam Hills is an unexpected choice though, presuming this is the Australian comedian rather than someone else of the same name. From reading his Wikipedia entry I've learnt he is disabled, which I must admit I didn't know from what little I've seen of his stand-up work, and worked on ABC's coverage of the 2008 Paralympics.

I reckon she is an excellent choice, I like the Difference listen quite a bit to talksport and she is excellent when she has been presenting Sunday Exclusive so its not suprise to see Channel 4 bringing her into the Paralympic team this year


Yes it is the comedian Adam Hills who is known over here for appearing on Mock the Week, Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News For You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He has an artificial foot which he mentions quite a bit in his routines but I have always found him very funny on comedy shows but I don't know about Sports Presenting. For Channel 4s sake I hope we don't have another Otis Daley on our hands as it will be terrible TV for all the wrong reasons

If he's *only* presenting the highlights show then Hills should have too much of a problem, especially if he did a games in 2008

Does Andrew Castle do a lot of tennis work for Sky?
It seems a bit odd having the main commentator for one channel working as an analyst for another,

Not really. He's done the odd bit here and there recently-presumably when he's available and they're short. Going back to the mid 90's, he was one of their lead tennis presenters. He's sometimes in the studio on Eurosport as well.

Yeah I saw him earlier, thought it was a bit wierd. He was also an analyst for Eurosport on the GB Davis cup tie recently and then worked as a main comm for some of the WTA tour coverage in the following couple of weeks.

Its also not the first time he's been on Sky recently, he was in the studio for their daily US Open highlight shows.

Andrew Castle seems to be popping up more and more on Sky'ds tennis coverage. He did some commentary on the Rotterdam tournament a couple of weeks ago and this week has been commentating and in the studio as well. He's also done some commentary for Eurosport this year.

Tennis does seem to be the one sport where it is acceptable for commenentators to work across all channels. Simon Reed, Chris Bradnam, Mark Petchey, Sam Smith, Annabel Croft, Greg Rusesdki and probably more all appear on 2/3 channels across the tennis season.

Ulster v Edinburgh (Live from Ravenhill)

Presenter: Stephen Watson
With: Andy Ward & Tony McWhirter
Commentators: Jim Neilly & Ryan Constable
Reporter: Gavin Andrews

I would say its only in football, and possibly rugby, where there is genuine conflict between broadcasters, where on-screen talent is limited to one broadcaster.

Cricket is, of course, almost entirely on Sky but when ITV show the IPL many of the same studio pundits which Sky use (Butcher, Stewart, Ramprakash, Solanki, Udal, Harvey) are rolled out over there too.

Even with rugby you have Andrew Cotter on Sky and BBC and the likes of Martin Gillingham & Simon Ward on ESPN, Sky and ITV.

I think football is the only sport where you'll have people on a exclusive contact- for everything else the pool of people available is quite small.

That said, even in football you have somone like Steve Bower who seems to commentate for everyone!

And Jim Proudfoot and Joe Speight and Dave Beckett...

So really it happens in all sports.