I still can't understand why Cummings is part of the commentary team just providing a critique of every decision.

Total waste of time and completely negative

Hopefully there is only room for Barrie and not Terry in a new shake-up

Both way past their sell by date as a lot of TV sports commentators are.

Eddie clearly loves the game but is inarticulate and asks banal questions at times when searching ones are needed especially to RFL officials.

Stevo is just an idiot who goes whatever his first opinion is even if there is conclusive proof of the opposite.

We want commentators who give a passionate but unbiased view of the game.

Of those we have seen I think Rod Studd is easily the best commentator and Carney would make the best frontman (like someone else on here said though he needs to take himself less seriously most of the time). Like a lot of others have said Jon Wells needs to be utilised much more he is excellent. I still fundamentally like Clarkey who is passionate about our sport and though has every right to be Wigan biased is nowhere near as bad as the two idiots. He just needs to get away from the obsession of the stats. I would also use Tony Rea more.

The problem will be like all other sports once the decision is made that will be it. Good or bad that's what we will get for some time to come.

I've not heard anywhere that they are going to be stepping down.

They do tend to grate on people, but as someone said, they have probably forgotten more about the game than a lot of people know about it on here.

The thing what gets me about the coverage is the amount of people that speak during the game; you've got Eddie and Stevo commentating, then Phil Clarke chimes in with his stats, then Stuart Cummings gets involved, and then Brian Carney.

Another bug bear of mine is the way they always focus on the negative; "oh that should have been a penalty", "he could have been penalised for that", "that's a professional foul, should be a yellow card" etc.

The set up IMO should be as follows:

Presenter: Hemmings or Carney
Commentators: Arthur & Stevo/Wells (or if Stevo retires, replace with Wells)
Analysis: Phil Clarke

Cummings should only be used after tries scored when the VR is checking things; or every 20 minutes just ask him how he things the ref is performing. At the moment, during practically every set they will speak to Cummings. He doesn't need that much input. Some of the stuff he says is good, but most of the time he's defending the referee to the hilt even if the ref screws up.

At half time get either Carney or Wells to do the HT analysis along with either Terry or Barry (3 people max)

Some people have been looking at alternatives such as Vossy, Dave Woods, Jon Champion etc. I doubt Champion will do it as he seems to do a bit of RU highlights, along with his ESPN work on football.

Dave Woods could be a good shout, he does CC for BBC but they will be losing the rights soon. Vossy wouldn't be cheap, but from his commentary, he sounds similar to Stevo as in he can go off on a tangent talking about other stuff rather than what's going on in front of them. Noble could be an option, and maybe even Robbie Paul.

Rod Studd does commentate but he's been doing a lot of darts recently, and I think he's trying to commentate in the mould of Sid Waddell (chatting crap most of the time, going from low pitch commentating to hyper high pitch)

Will be interesting to see what Sky do if it is true that they are "retiring" soon.

What's Cull up to nowadays?

i like the jon champion call, however i associate his voice with very quietly produced challenge cup matches.

I like carney as well, at times he's very good, however the one bug bear i have with him, is when he trips over one single word, he ends up sounding like a complete tosspot trying to correct himself and its incredibly noticeable.

Didn't Stevo sign a long term contract last year?

I can never understand how people say a with a World Cup winners medal and the biggest memorabilia collection in the sport knows nothing about RL.

As Wire x3 alluded to we see their TV personas, which rightly or wrongly are designed to entertain the casual viewer. I know a lot of people who could point out Stevo in a crowd, but wouldn't be able to name a single player.

Knowledge of RL and ability to commentate are not bedfellows.

Apaprently Champion is one of the ITV commentary team for the 2015 Rugby Union World Cup.

Nick Fozzard and Warren Stevens.. Now there is a commentary team!

After last nights ridiculously biased commentary from Stevo lets hope the rumours of his retirement are 100% true. The man is a disgrace to the game. When his main allie has to apologise for him you know how far over the mark he has stepped.

Good riddance.

The bloke hit a new low in my eyes last night. It was awkward & difficult to listen to.

I would imagine the Kleenex sales are very good in his local shop.

The drop goal hitting the posts...hmmm

That Sims incident was disgraceful, almost as bad as Chris Bridge at Huddersfield 2012. Straight red and an eight game ban.

The most annoying thing they do is when they just waffle on about things completely unrelated such as spending 30 seconds talking about steve buying a bike. At least once a game this happens

good question and I have been asking myself the same for a couple of weeks now. Does anyone know?

I've always rated John Kear as a commentator

I only ask for 3 things in life

1. World peace
2. Susanna Reid
3. The red button option for "crowd noise only" for televised sports. I'm sick to the t1ts of biased commentators/pundits in any sport

gonna disagree with number 2..as nice as she is...beccy meehan who accasionally reads the north west news..agree with 1 and 3 tho

To Specsavers with you M'lud, and damned your ignorance

If I could replace one thing on Sky's coverage it would be to have a split screen for replays during the game, so that when they insist on showing a replay while the ball is still in play you can at least see what's going on rather than having to try to work out from the noise of the crowd what might be happening. I really can't understand why they don't do that - the broadcaster who covered the Four Nations last year (not sure if the BBC was the actual broadcaster as opposed to taking pictures) did it.

bbc probably, they used to be fecking terrible for that during CC matches