How bad a deal the Heineken Cup FTA coverage arrangement is illustrated by the semi finals. Three French teams and one Irish, and the Irish and U.K. (who also sells advertising in Ireland) free to air broadcasters are left with the all-French clash. Presumably BT has some sort of “first pick” rights to reserve a top game for pay TV, but VMTV has got to show two games involving Irish teams (as it happens, both of the Leinster-Bath pool stage games) out of a possible 8 fixtures. They’ll get the final of course which may involve Leinster if they beat Toulouse.
Elsewhere we got the second penalty shootout (place kicking competition to be correct) in the history of the competition (in the history of professional rugby union possibly?) in Munster v Toulouse yesterday, so some rare graphics wheeled out we possibly won’t ever see again (the first and last up until now was Cardiff v Leicester back in 2009).
Elsewhere we got the second penalty shootout (place kicking competition to be correct) in the history of the competition (in the history of professional rugby union possibly?) in Munster v Toulouse yesterday, so some rare graphics wheeled out we possibly won’t ever see again (the first and last up until now was Cardiff v Leicester back in 2009).