I don't think this whole thing has anything to do with Ray Hadley and Andrew Voss commentating abilities, I believe Andrew Voss has his fanbase as has Hadley, but I believe they are both at th the top of the game, I think the real underlying problem is the treatment of Andrew by channel 9 which has really put Hadley offside with a lot of viewers......I believe at the end of the day the blame shouldn't be put on Hadley......it should be put on the nine boss, he is the guy who left Vossy out in the cold and relegated him to call a competition below his standard...... Gyngell is the man escaping the criticism here but at the of the day it has worked out, viewers are given a wider range of announcers due to the fact we can still see Vossy on fox sports calling warrior home games thanks to sky sports nz, As fans we are all winning here, 4 great callers in Warren, Hadley, Vossy & Smith......plenty of room in the pool for them all to swim.
Long post disclaimer:
100% disagree with the part in bold.
Hadley played a far bigger role in Voss's demise at Ch9 than you think, starting with the Rab's statue incident. Before that, Hadley was relatively out of favour at Ch9 for quite sometime and had constant run-ins with Ch9's sport director Steve Crawley (or whatever his name is). Then, Hadley - being the sycophant he is (hint: look up the recent link posted on here regarding his influence on NSW Police and NSW Government to see what I mean) - tried to suck up to Gyngell with the Rabs statue at Junee.
This was clearly orchestrated to try and get back in the good books of Ch9 management, paying homage to their 2nd most famous sporting commentator (behind Richie Benaud) since it was in 2011, Ch9 had one more year to go on their tv rights deal and there was a lot of talk about Rabs potentially retiring and hence Voss would be the heir-apparent given he has been calling RL at Ch9 since 1994 (after leaving Hadley's CCT in acrimonious circumstances before crossing over to Ch9). The one thing that always ate up Hadley was that up until that point, Voss had 'made it' on tv; Hadley didn't (after being given the arse from TFS in 1998). This was payback time in Hadley's mind to superscede Voss and when Voss came out with the harmless, accurate comment "the statue looked nothing like Rabs", Hadley pounced at the first opportunity by kicking up a big stink to try and paint Voss as the bad guy. To add to Voss's woes, Gyngell, who was good friends with Hadley by that stage, came out and supported Hadley by criticising Voss's comments. SURELY, Voss must've seen this as the 'writing on the wall' (regarding his future at Ch9) when he lost the support of the man that mattered the most - his boss. And, within 7 months after that incident, people tuned into Rd 2 FNF between Broncos/Cowboys and are astonished to find Hadley calling the game instead of Voss and to confirm beyond all doubt that Voss had been demoted, Tim Gilbert fronted the Sunday Roast a couple of days later instead of Voss, who was confined to calling the QLD Cup later that afternoon in stinking hot and humid weather in a tent rather than the air-conditioned commentary box that he had been accustomed to in the past.
We will never know the other details of what happened within that 7 month period, but I've already highlighted the main points. One of two ways an employer will try to get you to 'piss off' without directly telling you is: 1) to significantly cut your salary or 2) demote you to a lesser position. For Voss, it was definitely 2) and wouldn't be surprised if it was also 1). For Voss, 'so close, but yet so far'. To come oh so close to having the no.1 commentary position in the NRL (hence being able to call Origin and GFs) and then to have your dream squashed by the very person who had been your enemy for so many years and whom you shat upon from up high after supersceding him after crossing to Ch9 from 2UE, is a very bitter pill to swallow (akin to being cheated on by your gf, then you split up with her and try to apply for the dream job, only to find you got pipped at the post by her of all people because she brownosed her way or having connections with the management deciding the job application).
