Yeah, Cronk comes across in his play as clever, and Sterlo was a clever player and is a clever commentator.
But I still think the level of insight in commentary is pretty dreadful.
I like Blocker, and Walters. I liked them as players, and I like their passion for the game, and agree with a lot of their views outside of commentary. But they don't offer anything as commentators, and it's not just them.
I don't know if you watch the Super League, but Jon Wells (in particular, often with Brian Carney) does an outstanding job of dissecting a play. Those guys were both wingers and didn't strike me while playing as particularly clever players (not trying to dis them, they were fine players, but didn't rely on insight).
They get players on after the game to dissect plays with them, and almost without exception they show similar good insight, especially compared to the commentators we are bagging in these posts.
This is regardless of the player's position, from winger to half to prop, and their relative skill, from international to ok at super league (sometimes guys who are reserve standard in the NRL before going to Super League).
Before a game, Fox interviews some players about plays that might appear in the game, like Blake Green this week, and I've seen Cronk and Lewis do it in the past, and I always learn something interesting from these.
Players, and therefore commentators who have usually been through 10+ years at a professional level, spend many hours a week dissecting and analysing their own, and their opponent's games. They know plenty about the game other than just "hold the ball" and "whichever pack gets on top will win".
I speak to junior coaches, who have never coached above kids levels, about NRL, and they talk about specific players in the NRL, where they line up on the field, where their weak tackles or tackle busts, or offloads, or dominant tackles etc are likely to happen and why. They talk about game management and setting up for 2 plays ahead, about conserving energy, about controlling tempo. And they tell me their kids know this stuff.
You can't tell me that most commentators don't know an enormous amount about football, but except for Sterlo and Cronk (Ennis, Parker, some of the newer commentators do alright at this), they don't talk about it during the game.
It might be hard to do a Matt Elliot "Break down" (also excellent) in the middle of a game, but just some better insight than "their forwards are getting on top" would be appreciated. I think the standard is improving (with some newly retired players, as I mentioned, helping), but it is not good enough.
The issue with commentators being "too biased" would also largely disappear I think if they were devoting their thoughts to analysing play, rather than just expressing their feelings for a player/game. I could do the latter, experienced rugby league commentators need to impress us more with their thoughts, than with their egos.
