What do you mean by set up?
crews and field techs set up comms boxes and cabling way before kickoff
Exactly.
Also, couldn't Ch9 find anyone from Ch9 around the Brisbane/Gold Coast area to call the game if it was going to be the case that flights were delayed? Surely they could've woken up Alan Thomas from his retirement village and whizzed him to Skilled Park within an hour. After all, he did call the Broncos/Penrith match in Rd 3 2007 (the only other caller besides Rabs/Raaaay/Vossy/Sterlo/Tim Tam to call a game for Ch9 in recent years).
These are the sort of back-up plans Ch9 SHOULD have, but don't (i.e. have people in certain areas on stand-by to fill in commentary in the unlikely case events like these happen). Have stand-in callers in Newcastle, Brisbane/Gold Coast, Townsville, Melbourne and Canberra. For NZ though, Ch9 should just take the feed from Sky Sports over there (although they probably wouldn't now that Vossy is caller over there and Gyngell's strong disliking for him)
But the fact in Gus Gould's article that he clearly stated how Rabs always catches the latest possible flight and goes back on the earliest pretty much sums up his commitment for the game these days. Catch an earlier flight (which would also give him more time for preparation) and this wouldn't have been an issue. Funny how he also mentioned the possibility of calling the game off the monitor at the Ch9 studios. Trust him to mention something like that. He obviously got that idea from Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaay and his 2GB "inter-active studio", which is another name for "we can't be half-arsed travelling to the ground to call the game". A man's character is normally judged by the company he keeps. Oh, how true that is.
I'd be very surprised if Nine could be bothered paying their commentators for that. Usually for overseas games they just have Vossy and Sterlo introduce it then cut straight to the British feed. No idea what they will do for the WC with no Vossy, who always seemed the most committed to bring international news and games to Australian viewers.
The last time Ch9 sent their commentators to do a game outside of Australasia (i.e. more specifically, Australia and New Zealand) was the 2000 World Cup Final. IIRC, Ch9 sent Vossy and Gus to do the semi-final vs Wales and the final vs New Zealand. Ch9 took the coverage of the other matches they televised in that tournament from Sky Sports/BBC in the UK. The last time Rabs did a game outside of Australasia was the 1995 World Cup Final.
Surprisingly, Ch9 covered nearly all matches on the 1994 Kangaroos tour (including the bloodbaths against the English club sides). Showed how dedicated they were to RL back then.
