I'm genuinely worried about the poor lad after the result today

Just watched the bbc coverage and the bloke sounded gutted

If anyone on here lives near him please drop in and and check he's ok

Thanks

The way he was talking about the challenges Leeds will face WHEN they play Warrington in the final I'd be surprised if he gets out of Huddersfield anyway.

got fed up of him talking about swirling wind , sounded like ray french , great player though ,just needs some more commentating lines

Just watched the match...his commentary clearly indicated he didn't want Leeds to win plus his wining voice and his constant reference to the D U M M Y runner gets on my wick

Exactly the same as he was in the final last year, gutted that the winners were who they were.

RL as a whole needs new presenters, the only ones worth keeping atm across both channels are Wells, Tanya Arnold & Claire Balding.

Dave Woods handles commentary well, as does Eddie Hemmings at Sky.

The problem is that both need a level of tactical and technical knowledge sat at the side of them to inform the viewer, and neither has it on a regular enough basis.

John Kear would have been the ideal counterpoint to Woods yesterday, or even - despite his huge anti-Leeds bias - Brian Noble.

He's from a time when Wigan won everything and stopped him winning more honours in the game and Leeds should know their place and be the bridesmaid. He's always been like it with us he must have hated us winning trophy after trophy these last 8 years!

It is not club specific. Every game he commentates on is 'dreadful defence', etc Never accentuates the positives, only the negatives.

Disagree on Hemmings. He's the main problem with Sky coverage, turning everything into a false controversy and winding up the clockwork Stevo at the expense of describing what's going on in the game. It's one thing not having great technical knowledge, and another to get things consistently, wilfully wrong.

Woods, in contrast, is pretty good at his job. The BBC red button stuff after Leeds/Wigan was outstanding. A lot on the Bradford situation and the state of RL, with the right questions from Balding and Arnold, Ian Millward giving good quote and a very uncomfortable Brian Noble.

But Davies does annoy. A great player, but essentially negative in always concentrating on what he thinks an individual *should* have done rather than what a team *is* doing, and why. And the full extent of his "tactical knowledge" nowadays is "Kick early. Turn them around".

The problem Hemmings has is that he's trying to do both his job and Stephenson's IMO, simply because he knows the mad old duffer sat at the side of him is worse than useless. If he had a Paul Cullen or a Jon Wells sat at the side of him who he could trust to explain the finer points of the action to the viewer, he could concentrate on just calling the game.

Just watching the game back now - surely to God the BBC could find someone... anyone that can do a less nauseating job than Davies.

Disagree again watch Boots 'n' All when Brian Carney is presenting and then when Eddie is presenting it is like chalk and cheese, or one is excellent and one is terrible. I think that both Paul cullen and John Kear probably could be good but as they are almost now part of the furniture on the Sky coverage you can tell what they are about say Cullens ruck speed for example.

Why would they want to find anyone else, Rugby League is probably the 9th favoured sport to them and they only have to show 5-6 games a year. We should be grateful they even bother to show any games at all tbh now they started giving games to Sky. Sky will have all the Challenge Cup games in a couple of years!

I really hope so - the BBC coverage is poor by comparison. Their camera angles are frequently wrong, they don't show enough replays and when they do they are often inappropriate or not over a break in play.

Their commentary is woeful and their 'experts' have been out of the game for so long they're out of touch with today's game.

Just to put a point on things it's now 17:25 and the coverage of the CC Semi Final has been switched to the Red Button because the frikkin' golf has over-run.

It's as if they really want to take the p[size=100i[/sizess out of RL and it's supporters.

Disagree regarding hemmings. I have seen your response to someone else but for me he is poor.

OMG - the Beeb have still got Ray French commentating - the guy's 73 years old!!

Not going to defend French and Davies, but Woods is a better commentator than any Sky have to offer. Balding is a better presenter than any Sky have to offer. Noble is a more useful man to have around than, say, Phil Clarke.

Yes Sky have better camera angles and graphics, as a result of the cost efficiency of covering the sport more, but what do they do with it? Give it to Hemmings and Clarke to misinterpret and b*llock on about.

for f*cks sake when are they going to get rid of that rat ray french?

French is by all accounts a very nice man. He knows loads about RL, both past *and* present, and can speak and write engagingly about it. However he's an absolutely terrible broadcaster.

I thought I'd gone back in time to the 80's. Davies has turned into a less knowledgable Alex Murphy. Their discussion during the video ref deliberations for Carvell's try was breathtaking.

Eddie Waring lives on

Two players, both tackled short of the line, their ball carrying arms both hit the floor while they have defenders in contact with them although their forward momentum is never stopped.

Both players make a second effort to lift their arm from the floor in order to reposition the ball so they can ground it over the try-line.

So how is one a double movement, and the other not? If officials can't get simple decisions like those right (and for the record, Ganson did and Ian Smith didn't IMO) then they don't deserve the job they have.

Davies it said fractured BOTH his arms falling off his bike whilst practising for a charity ride. Now i can completely understand doing one arm as you fall one way of a bike, but BOTH? That takes some talent.

Agree AG it's times like this when the RFL should drag Cummins into a meeting and ask him just WTF he's doing with these officials and then give the t!t his p45 and send for Greg Mcallum.

the only good thing to say about the French and Davies commentaries is that although they are terrible they are nowhere near as bad as French and Murphy used to be.
Agree about Stubbs, he just concentrates on describing what he sees without the opinion or the self-indulgent banter we get fromthe likes of Stevo and Eddy. As for Clarke and his statistics -please, please, no more.