Used to love Rabs a few years ago, he was the voice of the game and he did have a good voice.
Fully agree with the person who said he's become a caricature of himself though. All the forced arguing with Gus and the talking of crap and thinking it's funny and crapping on about shows like The Block, he's become just another Channel 9 stooge. Shame really as like I said he used to be the iconic voice of the game.
Listen to any call of Rabs during his first few years at Ch9 back in the '90s vs his calls today. They're a world apart from each other. Rabs sounded much more passionate about league back then, and was pretty much on-the-ball, solely focusing on his match call. Such a shame that he rubbished the World Cup on Triple M, making a mockery of the other competing nations etc. He hasn't called a game outside of Australia/NZ since the '95 World Cup final at Wembley (he passed up the opportunity in the 2000WC and Vossy went over instead). His commentary during that '95 World Cup was very good (especially that thrilling Aus/NZ semi, which, along with the 2006 Tri-Nations final, is one of the best test matches I've ever seen).
Now, in his commentary, he is usually a play or two behind, as well as these contrived arguments with Gus Gould, easily getting sidetracked with all this useless information which has nothing to do with the game, the constant mixing up of players and mispronouncing surnames (and it's not just the Pacific Islander players. Gagai as GAY-guy and Widdop as Wid-DOP? I mean, come on!:lol
. I've noticed all the factors mentioned above since the start of the last tv rights deal when the 2 Friday night games were introduced (2007).
It's been a sharp decline since then and it's clear as the light of day that like Hadley, Rabby boy only cares and remembers the matches he called and doesn't give a stuff about anything he didn't call. But yeah, pairing him with Gus was one of the worst decisions Gyngell has made. Ch9's just desperate and trying to reinvent the wheel by introducing the Bill Lawry/Tony Greig type of banter from back in the '80s...been there, done that. I noticed Sterlo didn't commentate as many games this year - maybe to focus more on his Fox Sports show.
