Australia
National Rugby League (NRL) is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL competition (sometimes referred to as the Telstra Premiership for sponsorship purposes) is contested by 16 teams, 15 based in Australia and one based in New Zealand, and is the Southern Hemisphere's elite rugby league championship.
Broncos vs Panthers
Match scheduled:
Date: 18-06-2010
Time: 09:00 until 11:00
Round #15 - NRL Telstra Premiership 2010
Watch live rugby TV
In 1990 the NSWRL introduced a salary cap system to even the playing field of teams in the Winfield Cup.[42] The National Rugby League has adopted the salary cap system from its predecessor. A special team deals with salary cap issues and monitors teams on a yearly basis.[43] Each club is allowed AU$4.1 million per season to contract 25 players, with a minimum salary of just over $50,000, setting an effective upper limit of about $500,000 for the game's best players.[44]
The cap is actively policed[45] and clubs found to be in breach of its rules usually incur a fine. For example, six clubs were fined for minor infractions in 2003. These infractions are usually technical in nature and can sometimes be affected by third-party factors such as loss of sponsorship revenue affecting an allowance. During the 2007 season the NRL has investigated other ways of creating a fair and more beneficial cap for players and clubs.
However in mid-2002, the Bulldogs were found guilty of serious and systematic breaches. In addition to a more substantial fine, they were stripped of their competition points accumulated to that date, and hence denied a place in the finals. As the club had been leading the competition table prior to the penalty's imposition, this was a shattering outcome for the club and its fans.
In the 2006 pre-season the New Zealand Warriors revealed that their former management had rorted the salary cap in the 2004 and 2005 seasons. As a punishment the club was stripped of four competition points for 2006 and fined $430,000. They also had to play the 2007 season under a reduced salary cap.
After the completion of round 7, 2008, several clubs were fined for breaches in 2007. The hardest hit were the South Sydney Rabbitohs with a $70,000 fine, unfortunately coinciding with an alcohol-related incident involving five of the club's players, including the captain.
On April 22, 2010, the Melbourne Storm were stripped of their 2007 and 2009 premierships; 2006, 2007 and 2008 minor premierships, ordered to return $1.1 million of prize money to be distributed to the other 15 clubs, fined $500,000, stripped of all competition points thus far in the 2010 season and were deemed ineligible to acquire any further points for the 2010 season.
[edit] Judiciary
The NRL judiciary is made up of former players who convene in three-man panels to rule on on-field incidents. The judiciary is currently chaired by Wollongong district court judge Paul Conlon and made up of former players, Mal Cochrane, Michael Buettner, Bradley Clyde, Sean Garlick, Don McKinnon and Bob Lindner.[46][47]
[edit] Representative season
As well as playing for their club in the National Rugby League premiership season, players are sometimes entitled to play in a number of representative competitions that are conducted by the Australian Rugby League at the same time. These competitions include the one-off ANZAC Tests, World Cup competitions, Four Nations series, State of Origin series and the New South Wales City vs Country Origin series. In order for a player to qualify for a representative team in these competitions, they must firstly be eligible to be chosen for the side, based on a process of qualification (which involves the standard of play at club level).
[edit] Media coverage
The NRL provides six of the top seven and 78 of the top 100 programs on subscription television[48].
[edit] Coverage history
Professional club rugby league in Australia has been revolutionised by television, with a shift away from daytime games to night-time games over recent years to better suit the official television broadcasters, Channel 9 and Fox Sports. This even extended to the Grand Final, which from 2001 to 2007 was shifted from 3pm on Sunday to 7pm Sunday night to better suit broadcasters. It has been moved back to 5pm Sunday from 2008 onwards.
Free-to-air coverage for Channel 9 viewers in states other than New South Wales or Queensland is delayed until later at night to make way for other programming by Channel 9. The late showing has upset fans in those states but their call for change had remained unheard by the NRL and Channel 9.
The Fox Sports, which broadcast its first rugby league matches during the 1997 Super League season, has broadcast the remaining National Rugby League matches exclusively live since the competition's inception in 1998. In 2007, "Monday Night Football" was added to Fox Sport's rugby league coverage.
In 2003 the Grand Final was broadcast live in the United States by Fox Sports World as it had been since 2001.[49]
[edit] Current television coverage
[edit] Dom
estic
- Friday Night Football starts at 7:30 pm and consists of two matches shown on Channel 9 free-to-air television in New South Wales (including Albury, New South Wales-Wodonga, Victoria) and Queensland. Both games are played concurrently, with one broadcast live and the other shown on delay immediately after the first, usually at 9:30 pm. In many cases, the order in which the games are shown differs in different television markets. For instance, a match featuring a Queensland team, such as the Brisbane Broncos, would usually be shown first in Queensland markets, but might be broadcast second in New South Wales if a popular Sydney team such as the St George-Illawarra Dragons were playing in the other match. Both matches are broadcast after midnight on Saturday morning in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.
- Super Saturday includes one Toyota Cup afternoon game at 3:15 pm, followed by that game's corresponding Telstra Premiership match at 5:30 pm. This is then followed by two consecutive NRL matches beginning at 7:30 pm, one of which is shown live and one on delay immediately after the conclusion of the 7.30pm game. Providing that the viewer has Foxtel Digital or Austar Digital, they can use a tool called Viewer's Choice. Viewer's Choice gives the viewer a choice of either game played at 7:30 pm to be shown live. All four games are shown on Fox Sports.
- NRL Sunday is a 2:00 pm match broadcast live on Fox Sports.
- Sunday Football is broadcast on Channel 9. The match normally kicks off at 3:00 pm, but the broadcast is delayed until 4:00 pm, running until 6:00 pm in order to provide a strong lead-in to Channel 9's evening news. These broadcasts are aired after midnight on Monday mornings in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
- Monday Night Football is televised live from 7:00 pm by Fox Sports.
- Furthermore, there are several shows dedicated to talking about NRL, such as The Footy Show (Thursdays, 9.30pm, Channel Nine in New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory and Canberra: screens after 11.30pm in all other areas of Australia), a variety show with discussions about current-round games and issues, competitions, live bands, and sketches; The Sunday Footy Show (Sundays, 11.00am, Channel Nine in NSW, QLD, NT and Canberra), a recap of Friday and Saturday's games, when most of the matches have been played; The Sunday Roast (Sundays, midday Channel Nine in NSW, QLD, NT and Canberra), a show dedicated to discussing the heavy issues, controversies, and playing tactics currently developing; and a newcomer, The Matty Johns Show (Thursdays, 7.30pm, Channel Seven in NSW, QLD, NT except Darwin and Canberra: after midnight in all other regions of Australia), a more sketch-and-regular-segment-oriented version of The Footy Show. There also exists numerous off-beat rugby shows on Fox Sports, typically on the Monday/Tuesday after the round. In print media, there are two magazines solely about rugby league. There is the known-and-respected Rugby League Weekly, and a tabloid format, Big League. ALPHA generally also carries some rugby league items.
Note: Saturday and Sunday broadcast schedules can also vary, with less Saturday and more Sunday matches. This is dependent on the scheduling of matches for the New Zealand Warriors played in Auckland, New Zealand.
- The NRL Grand Final is shown live in every state on Channel 9, with New South Wales and Queensland receiving up to 10 hours of continuous pre-game and post-game coverage. The game is also shown live in New Zealand, however ratings have never been as good with the current nighttime format, due to the fact that the Grand Final is played very late on a Sunday night (NZST), with full time called early Monday morning (NZST).
[edit] International
The NRL is televised internationally with the following channels being the main telecast partners overseas.
- Australia Network - Provides free-to-air coverage to overseas locales in the Asia-Pacific region and India. Covers the Grand Final live.[50]
- Sky Sport in New Zealand has coverage of all the NRL games including both LIVE games on Sunday with a delayed option available later in the night.[51]
- Setanta Sports: From 2006 until June 2009 (when Setanta went into administration and then ceased broadcasting in Great Britain), viewers in the UK, Republic of Ireland, USA and Canada would receive 2-3 LIVE and/or replayed games from each of the weekly rounds, plus all the playoffs, the Grand Final and all three State of Origin matches live. This deal included test matches involving Australia, except for those when Australia played Great Britain.[52] Setanta still broadcasts in Canada as of 2010 and provides live and delayed coverage of several NRL games a week during the summer when soccer goes on hiatus.
- Spike TV - A landmark deal was agreed in 2009 whereby NRL finals matches would be beamed into 100 million homes in the United States and Canada. It is the first time NRL games have become available on basic cable in the U.S.[53] *America One's One World Sports have announced a 3 year deal starting in 2010 to broadcast NRL games in the United States and the Caribbean. The broadcast will potentially reach an audience of 35 million households.[54]
The 2009 NRL preliminary finals and Grand Final were broadcast LIVE on TV in the UK and Ireland on the new ESPN UK channel [55][56]. BigPond and the NRL have reached an agreement to stream selected remaining games live into the UK and Ireland, over BigPond's web portal service.[57]
For the remainder of the 2010 Telstra Premiership, and for the 2011/2012 seasons, new sports channel MSK, (channel 433 on the BSkyB platform) will feature at least three Telstra Premiership games from each round of matches.
Games will be shown free of charge for the first two months from 16th April 10:30am UK Time, after which they will be available via subscription. The NRL Grand Final, State of Origin series and all International matches will be screened LIVE in the UK and Republic of Ireland on Sky Sports to all customers that subscribe to the Sky Sports channels.
Omnisport (owned and operated by Perform Media Channels Limited) performgroup.com/omnisport has also signed a similar agreement to stream matches on pay-per-view LIVE in selected territories around the world through the omnisport.tv website.[58]
The UK secured new broadcasting rights in 2010 which will see 3 games televised each week including international and representative matches. Fans will also be able to see the NRL’s new weekly half-hour international highlights show, ‘NRL Full-time’, with Sky Sports joining Starhub (Singapore), Dahlia TV (Italy), Orbit Showtime Network (Middle East) and V Australia (in-flight) in broadcasting the program
