Originally Posted by Darren Lethem:
“nope.”
Well technically you do not need anyone!
I do not think they use any more people on their rugby league coverage as any other sport overall, it is just that rather than having a separate studio plus two or three commentary crews for different games they have everyone work together on every game.
But Sky have been using four people as the main commentary team for a long time, with a guest joining Eddie, Stevo, and Phil. They have also always had a touchline reporter.
So all they have done is add Stuart Cummings as the former head of referees who can explain decisions which is far better than the everyone guessing as the rules which is what used to happen (usually five minutes later explained as "Stuart Cummings has been on the phone to say...). And Jon Wells to provide analysis at half and full time, which I prefer to the previous panel discussion at half time. His position is more like the third man in cricket.
When Brian Carney is involved, and not as a summarizer he is effectively just taking a studio anchor position, which no one would question in other sports as rugby league is the exception where the lead commentator is also the studio anchor.
And it is not like the BBC are any different, where for an average Challenge Cup round you would have something like Chapman, Noble, Millward, and Crabtree in the studio with one or two of them providing comments during the commentary from Woods and Davis while they have Hunter-Paul and Arnold on the touchlines.
Personally I do not see a problem. While there may be a lot of voices heard during commentary the guests only speak when they have something to add so it does not seem cluttered, and better than the current trend of three-person teams in cricket.