I'd just like to point something out regarding a Super 12 "Commentator", Murray Mexted, and that is the fact that he is not in fact a commentator at all, he is a
speculator. Commentators, as implied by their title, will commentate a game of rugby, speculators make wildly untrue statements as to what teams captains, teams, countries, etc are thinking or planning, or in fact can at times make stupid statements about anything at all whether it be related or not to rugby.
Murray Mexted is also prone to letting his personal biases get in the way of actually providing any impartial speculation, a good example of this is the fact that he hates any kicking of the ball, as "possesion is king". This has led to the great pieces of TV audio that go along the lines of:
[player gets ball]
[player kicks ball]
[Murray Mexted] Aw no no no, don't kick it, what were you thinking!
[another player from same team runs onto ball, and scores try]
[silence from Mexted]
..and this has happened many times, in fact almost weekly. Along with his annoying habit of spouting the "phase count", and we wont even go into his favored/unfavored players list. However I remember fondly the match where he sat there trying to guess for 5 minutes whether the team with possesion was going to break left or right once they emerged from the scrum, trying to encourage speculation from other commentators, who wanted none of it. Super 12 deserves better than this, I mean fuck, I was glad the other week when the match I was watching had South African commentators.. and that scares me!
I'm looking forward to Sky implementing some advanced features for future broadcasts of their Super 12 coverage, I know mine will be set something like this:
[on] Commentary
[off] Speculation
Tags: Rugby