Firstly he said he wanted to go onto 2012 for the olympics, now this, is he seriously going to commentate when he is 79???
Rex mossop in the final years all over again.
Only in rugby league would we allow one personality to have such a powerful role in the game, everyone is scared of him and no one will tell him to bugger off
Firstly, I don't see him lasting the distance and calling games at 79. He'll retire sometime during the next tv rights deal, or he will be semi-retired and Ch9 will still keep him for the big games (most notably, State of Origin and NRL Grand Final)
Secondly, yes, Mossop was on the way out during his last year at Ch10 (1990), but he was only 62. Rabs is going to be 74 next month.
Finally, I agree with you that Rabs has a very large strangehold in the media (both from Fairfax and News Ltd), but I disagree that Rabs is the only personality to exert such power in the broadcasting of the game. Ray Hadley has also had just as much of an influence, especially during the Gallop years. Since Hadley joined 2GB in 2002, must I remind you of how many years 2GB had the exclusive radio rights (2002-12) and all the subsequent radio blackouts that ensued. Sometimes, during Origin round, there was only 1 game on Saturday night and the Continuous Call Team would be on air from 12-6pm and come 6pm they buzzed off and there was no coverage of the game kicking off at 7:30pm. Again, nothing said about this from the NRL administration.
Then, when Monday Night Football was re-introduced in 2007, 2GB paid to stop other commercial AM radio stations from covering the game. As was written in the 2SM thread, they even stopped Graeme Hughes from hosting a State of Origin legends lunch a few years ago; a corporate function that they themselves weren't even interested in hosting.
Then, the long-awaited World Cup in 2008....2GB get the rights on a silver platter, only to denigrate the international game ad nauseum during their radio coverage, saying it was a waste of time, no one cares etc. etc. Thankfully, New Zealand won that tournament to make Hadley look like a goose.
Then, there is the other abomination, the Continuous Call Team, which was supposedly the flagship radio program of the NRL, but gradually metamorphosed into an amateur version of The Footy Show talking about everything from women's clothes, counselling people calling in over marriage problems and everything non-RL related. What a joke! It took the formation of the ARLC and removal of Gallop to get more decent radio coverage of matches with the increased coverage Triple M took on.
