Originally Posted by Cissy Fairfax:
“Does Brian Moore not do the rugby show any longer, or is there any rugby show?
I tried a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday evening and it was more football and talking about matches from India and South America.”
Originally Posted by Mark F:
“Probably on Talksport 2.
There hasn't been a Rugby show on Talksport since last year..”
I think Full Contact with Brian Moore came to a conclusion at the end of the last domestic rugby union season in May and the station has taken the decision not to bring it back this term. As a consequence, I don't think Moore has any links with talkSPORT any longer.
The programme that you heard in the old Full Contact timeslot is Trans Europe Express with Danny Kelly, which was initially a weekly programme looking ahead to Euro 2016 in what was the My Sporting Life slot on Sunday nights in the months leading up to the competition, which then became the regular weekend post-match programme during the tournament itself. This season on Sunday nights, Full Contact has been replaced by an extra hour of The Press Pass (now going out between 6-9pm) and an extra hour of Trans Europe Express (9pm-midnight).
However, talkSPORT 2 have launched a new rugby union magazine programme this season - it goes out on Sunday evenings between 5-6pm, and is repeated on Monday nights and I think a few times during the overnight hours later in the week. There's also a podcast on
talkSPORT.com. The show typically follows directly on from talkSPORT 2's live Sunday afternoon Aviva Premiership commentaries (the day of their game of the week has been switched from Fridays to Sundays this season), with it being hosted from the ground by their rugby union commentator Andrew McKenna and whoever his co-commentator is. At one hour, it's shorter than Full Contact and has clearly been streamlined in a cost effective way to follow on from a commentary and to hopefully retain some of the audience that had tuned in for that. I should mention that they still do a studio-based Rugby Show on Sundays when there's no Premiership fixtures/commentaries, this Sunday just gone for example the show was hosted by Russell Hargreaves as Macca was covering a European Rugby Champions Cup game for BT Sport.
I think the folk who run talkSPORT have come to the conclusion that these sort of non-football magazine programmes are better fits for talkSPORT 2, where they can schedule them relatively consistently without football coverage interfering as often as it does on talkSPORT.