Despite live coverage of the England-Australia game on BBC earlier today, News at Ten constantly refer to England as Great Britain.

What a heinous crime.

I know, heads will roll........

Did you hear the orchestra composer, she thought it was Lithuania vs Angola. Scandalous

I thought the coverage was pretty good to be honist better than sky.

Better build up on BBC

Not the point I was making, I was pointing out the BBCs general lack of accuracy when reporting on rugby league, not with the live coverage itself. I'd say getting the name of the team is a pretty basic error and reflects the importance the BBC place on RL.

Burn something. Union Jack or Flag of St George?

TV license?

The Aussies players call us GB!

Does it honestly matter?

This is what winds me up about narrow minded, chip on shoulder rugby league fans. We could have broadcast this game to the whole universe, with viewing numbers in their trillions and some fans would still moan.

I thought Clare Baldings poetic build up was one of the best I've ever seen from the BBC.

She summed up the history, the pasision and the sense of occasion brilliantly.

There was also good recognition of the Kangaroos as possibly the best National team of any sport over the last 40 years.

I normally cant stand the BBC but fair doos today it was top notch.
Their best production by far and Claire Baldings pretty good. They seem to be getting better every year with their coverage.
On a side J Davies wasn't annoying today and came accross very passionate

What he/she says is correct though. Would they (having just shown the England v Australia RU match) refer to England as the Lions? I doubt it.

i had forgotten it was on the bbc and after i had got out of bed at daft o clock to watch it on channel 9, i was thinking that sky had improved coverage from last weekend



john kear made some good honest calls about the game , much better production than last weekends effort

But the Lions dont switch and change their name every other year though. They are two seperate entities whereas England IS GB and vice-versa. It's not too much of a suprise if some people get confused.

It WASN'T good!!!

It wasn't in HD!!!!!!! and surround sound!

the HD channel only had on previews.

DISGRACE!!!!

I enjoyed the BBC coverage, which in the past has at times seemed deliberately amateur. I hope we see more RL on the beeb.

wot e said

Have to agree that it should have been on HD also (just got a new telly

)

She was trying to be funny. I thought the Beeb did a great job yesterday. Have to disagree with whoever said that Davies was not annoying though. He never used to annoy me, but he said nothing that made any sense yesterday. Nobby kept having to effectively re-word and summarise what Davies was trying to say.

Dave Woods is ok, as opposed to excellent. But he's light years better than Ray or Eddie n Stevo. Kear on the other hand (excusing his insistence that Gaz Ellis was Ben Westwood for about 5 minutes!) was quite brilliant. Clare Balding was good, the build up and the post match was great (if you compare it to the NZ v France match on Sky, which began with Eddie talking over the national anthems and went straight to kick off).

Well done the Beeb. Let's have more games on National TV please.

Also thought the Aussie players were great when interviewed. Really pushed the openness of the competition. I know we all think it's a nailed on Aus or Kiwi win but who watching for the first time wants to hear Inglis say, France are second rate. Its great to hear everyone 'on message'.

Wa great to have a big game back on terrestrial tv a point Clare Balding rightly highlighted. Despite many people seemingly having access to SKY coverage these days there's nowt like having a game back on a major terrestrial channel to give it a much higher profile.

I thought the coverage was excellent overall, much better than SKY's.

The only downside - and it's nowt to do with the beeb - was the empty seats in the stadium. You never see that in major union games and thats in much larger stadiums. No matter how many times you try to big a game up as a major occasion, large blocks of empty seats suggest otherwise.

The crowd figure was pretty good so perhaps the RFL needs to look at their pricing strategy for the games so they make sure the seats that are in most regular camerashot are filled first.

it was noticeable that the ends of the ground where full (the cheapest seats) whilst the seats on the halfway line were empty.

I think at modern grounds such as the DW, KC, Galpharm etc the RFL can't really get away with the 'pay £10 more to sit one block nearer the halfway line' system that they usually go for...most RL fans are aware there isn't a bad seat in the grounds just mentioned, so simply go for the cheapest.

and it was great to have international RL on the Beeb, maybe the 10pm news did get the name wrong...but it woulden't have even been mentioned at all had the game been on SKY

The BBC stats quoted at half time as we saw on channel Nine over here were quite pathetic though, Andrew Voss and Phil Gould were taking the p@ss big time