Who can remember TV coverage of rugby league before 1998 ?
For people who lived in the Hunter region such as myself, from what I remember at the time:
1996: 3 Ch9 games shown on NBN, Ch9 affiliate: Friday night at 8:30pm (1hr delay), Saturday afternoon at 4pm (1 1/2hr delay) and Sunday evening at 6:30pm. Sunday evening was only 1hr highlights (about 43mins excluding commercials) for the first 13 rounds, replaced by Monday night football from Round 14.
If the Newcastle Knights weren't televised on Ch9 that round, we got a 4th game: Knights home games on Sunday were replayed later that night at 11:30pm (with either NBN or Optus Vision calling the game) and Saturday night games were replayed at about 9:30pm.
Another interesting point: I remember Canterbury vs Gold Coast Chargers was shown on NBN one Sunday arvo at 4pm with Mike Rabbitt calling. Not 100% sure if NBN regularly covered other Chargers games (or even when they were the Seagulls back in 1995, as the Seagulls/Chargers - like the Knights - were also sponsored by NBN during the mid-'90s), maybe someone can verify this.
When was the Sunday night 43 minute game farce?
It was stopped after Rd 13 1996 due to poor ratings. Rd 13 Brisbane vs Parramatta was the last 43 minute highlights package Ch9 Sydney did on Sunday evening before it was dropped in favour of Monday night football. However, the folk up in SE-QLD still got RL coverage on Sundays when Brisbane or South Queensland Crushers played at home (I recently stumbled upon highlights of Broncos vs Gold Coast Chargers and Crushers vs Wests Magpies on another website, both with Andrew Voss calling).
1997: 3 games on Ch9 shown on NBN: Friday night ARL at 9:30pm (2hr delay), Saturday afternoon ARL at 4pm (1hr delay) and Monday night SL or World Club Challenge game at 9:30pm (2hr delay).
Knights away Saturday night games were replayed on NBN at 8:30pm (1hr delay), home Sunday games were replayed at 11:30pm and away Sunday games were at 4pm (1hr delay). All of these non-Ch9 games were with either NBN or Optus commentary.
In addition, ABC had a Super League show at 5pm, hosted by Debbie Spillaine. In the beginning, they just took a replay of the Fox Sports telecast before later on deciding to do their own commentary (pretty sure David Morrow was the caller). During the middle of the SL Season was the famous, ill-fated World Club Challenge, and this was the first time us FTA folk without PayTV got to hear Eddie and Stevo from the UK. World Club Challenge game of the round in the UK was replayed, as well as the odd match from the English Super League.
Finals that year were very interesting. Ch9 did BOTH SL and ARL finals. ARL Saturday/Sunday arvo finals were shown at 5:30pm (2 1/2hr delay), which was a nail-biter during the preliminary finals as both Knights/Bears and Sea Eagles/Roosters matches went right down to the wire, with full-time on tv not occurring until close to 7:30pm. SL finals were on Sat night/Monday night. Both GFs were live.
OT, interesting to note that during 1998-2001, NBN showed non-Ch9 Knights away games on Sunday LIVE . This happened about 2-3 times per year during that period. So, we were lucky to watch 2 games on Sunday afternoon: Knights away game live at 2:30pm (during 1998-2000)/2pm (in 2001) followed by the Ch9 match. As the 2:30pm game finished at about 4:10-15pm, we'd miss the first few minutes of the Ch9 game and any tries scored were briefly replayed before picking up the Ch9 telecast around the 5-10min mark of the game. The only one that wasn't shown was the infamous '99 Bulldogs vs Knights game (Greg Smith's only NRL game) as there were contractual disputes with NBN using Fox/Optus' coverage. Besides the short highlights on the news that night, still haven't seen a replay of that game to this day.
