THE last time Collingwood played Geelong this season back in round eight, 7000 hardy souls in Brisbane, according to TV Tonight ratings, stayed up well past midnight to watch the four - yes, that's right four - hour delayed telecast. Dyed-in-the-wool Pies supporter and all round footy aficionado that I am, I wasn't one of them and never got to see the game. Like many other grown ups with families and a house to run, Channel 7 and the AFL please take note, I have busy Saturdays and cannot afford to go to bed at 2.30am.
Prior to that game and furious with Channel 7 for its treachery to footy fans and with the AFL for negotiating such a slack deal that allows its so-called broadcast partners to delay broadcasting games or simply dump them altogether, I penned my first Channel 7/AFL rant for the year.
I pointed out that down the entire eastern seaboard of Australia (and most points west for that matter) there were only two free-to-air broadcast areas missing out on live coverage of that game and one of them was Brisbane - a city in which I understood the league was determined to build the game's supporter base.
As it turned out, the match was a cracker, just three points the difference.
Between then and now all Brisbane-based oval ball dreamers, whose household budget doesn't stretch to Fox, have missed out on plenty of other Friday night crackers - Carlton and Geelong, round 9, West Coast and Geelong, round 16, Adelaide and Essendon, round 17 and Carlton and Hawthorn, two weeks ago, to name a few.
In fact, during the entire 2011 season, Channel 7, with its triplet digital stations, has only broadcast three Friday night matches live in Brisbane.
When the St Kilda Collingwood match (round 21) was also relegated to the midnight hour, I wrote warning of a great rage stirring in me at the prospect of Channel 7 refusing to show live the final Friday night game of the season between the Pies and the Cats, which will be, almost without doubt, the grand final precursor.
Well the time is nigh and Collingwood and Geelong, one and two on the ladder, will fight it out tonight.
And of course, while just about everyone else in Australia gets to watch it live or with a short delay free-to-air - including those on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts in Queensland - the scheduling shows Brisbanites will once again be treated to a range of hokey lifestyle shows and dated British and American repeatedly repeated sitcoms on Channel 7's channels such as Are You Being Served (By a Bunch of Excruciating Caricatures), One Foot in the (Already Exhumed Many Times) Grave, My Name is Earl (Schmearl), How I Met Your Mother (of All Irritating Shows).
Give me strength.
The commitment of 7 to the game is obviously about as strong as Joseph Stalin's was to capitalism.
And as for AFL chief Andrew Demetriou, whose outfit negotiated this appalling, fan-betraying deal, I have one request and one warning.
If you really do have a commitment to building the profile of the game in Queensland, for Chrissake grow a pair, pick up the phone and apply a bit of pressure to the suits at Channel 7.
And, next year's $1.25 billion deal had better not have given your broadcast partners any wriggle room because you'll get tired of reading my complaints before I get tired of writing them.
Margaret Wenham is The Courier-Mail's Viewpoint and Focus editor and loves the great game deeply.
