Say what you like about the game, the AFL Footy Show is much better than ours.
100% agree
Mind u without Sam and Billy it would be pretty dry. Love it though
And Shane Crawford as well.
Difference is:
a) Much more relevanty footy content in the AFL version, too much BS segments in the NRL
b) a better balance of straight panellists (Lyon, prettyboy Brayshaw) and the comic relief (Newman). Meanwhile in the NRL it seems like every bloody host is trying to be funny 24/7 and noone tries to be serious for even part of the show. It's been like that since they got rid of Sterlo.
c) the AFL show is just run so much more tightly. They go from segment to segment, from topic to topic, without as many interruptions and they don't let themselves get sidetracked too far. If Newman gets too carried away Lyon/Brayshaw always pull him back into line. While the NRL one is nothing like that. They spend ages doing injokes only they think is funny (segments on Marios stupidity, Brohmans obesity etc etc). They run out of puff every 15 mins.
Channel 9 should get whoever is the producer of the AFL version to spend a season on the NRL version and it would be so much better.
I don't agree with you with a lot of things you've said on this forum. However, I do 100% agree with everything you wrote in this post. Regarding each part:
a) Yes, there are too many BS segments on the NRL footy show. I'm not suggesting that a show in that timeslot cannot have any humour and it has to be a full 100% footy show for it to succeed. However, any executive producer in the tv industry that has half a brain will tell you that segments like "Fat's Cash" and Mario's involvement on the show are not funny, a complete waste of time and add absolutely no value to it. If Ch9 are absolutely fair dinkum about doing a major overhaul of the show and looking to at least double their ratings in Sydney (like they keep saying every off-season in the summer, things like "THE NEW LOOK" Footy Show), it's segments like these that have to go. I mean, I do believe that Mario is a nice guy in real life and stuff and I feel sorry for some of the crap he cops (although he voluntarily goes on the show), but paying out on him with the same gag they have been doing to him since 1998 with all the close-up mirror stuff and constant changing of camera angles when he's talking, as well as him incessantly say "FAT, FAT, FAT.." is going beyond "flogging a dead horse".
b) This is probably the most noticeable aspect over the past few years. In the beginning, there was that cohesion and chemistry between Fatty, Sterlo (with Blocker being like a sidekick that used to get paid out on a lot, especially in the AntiAds). This was one of the reasons why they became household names (at least in NSW and QLD) and even in the eyes of non-league supporters, as soon as you mentioned their names, they were immediately synonymous with the phrase "The Footy Show", in the same way you would immediately recognise the voice of one of The Beatles if their song on the radio. Then when Blocker left, it was the Fatty and Sterlo combination. Where it COMPLETELY lost direction was after Sterlo left. Fatty/Sterlo/Blocker were all similar age, played in the same era. But after Sterlo left, Fatty was partnered with two people (Chief and Matt Johns) who were a fair bit younger than him and from a different era/generation. It was around this time that the "let's all try and be funny on our own" mentality started to set in, which has grown further to ppl like the Big Marn and some of the disgusting stuff he did last night which would've never happened on the show 10-15 years ago. It was after this mentality really kicked in (where the signs were very mild in the years before Sterlo left) that the show lost direction. Getting a random warm-up guy to participate in Fat's cash (and like the others, tried to make a name for himself by talking rubbish whilst thinking he was funny yet backfired terribly) last week, as well as Mario on for 2-3 segments was scratching at the very bottom of the barrel. And having permanent panelists like Freddy, who only says a few words at the beginning and then is MIA for the remainder of the show is very amateur and is something that wouldn't happen on the AFL show.
c) Yes, the AFL show flows more freely and in sequence when compared to the NRL show. This is probably the most noticeable aspect over the years. Even when I watch episodes from the early 2000s period, the NRL show flowed in sequence. Now, all the segments are all over the place. When you watch it, it feels like the hosts/panelists have done absolutely no preparation whatsoever and they all turned up and decided to ad-lib the whole show. Again, the host bears as lot of this responsibility. In the past, Fatty had control and was able to steer the show like a main host should, but he has completely lost that 'command' and 'authority' as the main host that he used to have in the early years. Now, when you have ppl like Benji Marshall correcting and setting him straight, as well as Braith Anasta earlier this year saying things like "it's a miracle this show's still going and you're still the host", it shows that they have no respect for the host, and so they shouldn't with a host who constantly cuts ppl off and changes the topic all the time. Again, related to what I said in the previous point, the host bears a lot of responsibility when it comes to the sequence of segments.
Finally (to finish off a long rant), I'd say up until as recently as 2005, the NRL show was better and funnier than the AFL one. Eddie/Sam/Trevor were like the equivalent of Fatty/Sterlo/Blocker in the early years and they too had good cohesion. Although the AFL show still exhibited a lot of professionalism during this time, in the years just before Eddie left at the end of 2005, a lot of AFL supporters were sick and tired and believed that even though he was the main host, Eddie McGuire had way too much input and influence on the show, like he had a completely stranglehold of everything and the show was all about him. Although Sam did some funny and wacky stuff back then, his role was very heavily constrained by Eddie, whereas alongside Garry and James, he is allowed to be himself. However, since then, from the AFL show's point of view, I can definitely say that replacing Eddie with Garry Lyon and James Brayshaw as co-hosts, as well as replacing Trevor with Billy and Shane Crawford has definitely been for the better. The cohesion between the co-hosts Garry/James/Sam Newman is a lot better, and when the 'fab 3' combination was split up after Eddie left, in the context of the show, Trevor Marmalade (although his schtick had gone a bit stale by this stage) served very little purpose and it was the correct decision to give Billy and Shane more airtime at his expense after they got rid of him at the end of 2008.
I'd like to see the NRL show adapt a format similar to the AFL show, but I'm not holding my hopes up high anytime soon.
