Editorial: Up your game Sky, Cup TV is ho-hum

The Sky coverage is a hotch potch, writes Craig Cooper. Photo / Getty Images

I'm sure this will change come quarter-finals time, but the Rugby World Cup is starting to bore me.

In the past, an entire Sky TV channel has been devoted to a worthy sport or event. The Olympic Games, for example.

But not the RWC. I get why though.

The fact that Sky is channelling its RWC coverage through its Sky 1 channel is a reminder to us insular New Zealand rugby fans that the game simply isn't that big on a world scale. The revenue isn't there.

The best rugby coverage on the RWC is coming out of our national newspaper - the NZ Herald. It's varied.

The Sky coverage is a hotch potch of live games, repeated games, highlight packages, repeated highlight packages, and panel commentary shows repeated ad nauseam, so much so that they become dated quickly.

Andrew Mehrtens was a good All Black and by all accounts one of the funniest All Blacks ever to play the game. But the joke wears a bit thin after a while.

As does Jeff Wilson's head shake and "jeez you're a crack-up mate" smirk as Mehrts wanders around an historic abbey talking about how a Ngapuhi rampage made it as far as the UK.

First time around, it's funny. But it starts to grate after a while.

Rugby analysis can quite easily become quite boring, if you aren't someone whose bedroom is painted black with a matching silver fern bedspread.

May a lightning bolt strike me down but some of us find it boring the first time. Let alone the third time.

We're not assembling a parliament to run a country. Or deciding who gets to travel on the first plane bound for the colonisation of Mars. It's a rugby team.

More variety please. Sky TV is an expensive service - they need to up their game, fans deserve better.