By Ross Stapleton




As the wide
open 2005 finals series kicks off with a surging Sydney attempting to continue the late season stumbles of West Coast,
it still takes getting used to the total absence of Nine from the finals broadcast
box.

While Channel Ten has
lifted its game coverage in some respects this season – there’s still no
getting past the reality that for all the tired debate and angst about the
Collingwood president calling his own club’s games, Eddie McGuire and Nine’s regular
Friday night team remain the AFL TV benchmark.

The combination of wry
wit from football’s most entertaining punster and sharp observer Dennis
Commetti, aligned with upbeat McGuire, is by a significant margin the
best calling duo in the
business. Supplemented by Garry Lyon
delivering the best and most insightful analysis of the game in
progress, it’s an unbeatable three amigos combination offering a brilliantly
produced prognosis. Now if only Dermott Brereton – who’s forgotten
far more about football than most of us can ever hope to learn – could
impart his special comments without veering off into a parallel
universe and resist the need to continually predict
the next passage of play – they’d be a “fab four”! With brilliant
camera work and astonishingly
good direction, we are allowed to follow a game whose larger field of
play is conspiring against such centimetre perfect delivery.

And so it is with
heavy heart I bid adieu to Nine as Ten now basks in the September glow of its exclusive
finals’ coverage. That’s not to say Ten
doesn’t do a more than respectable job, but when it comes to the standard of Friday
night football under lights – Nine is very definitely still the one!

As for tonight’s
opening ball burster – even Sydney Swans fans will feel they are some
sort of a chance against an Eagles side usually unbeatable at home, but getting the stutters
with three losses in their last five games.
While the rest of the weekend action on Ten is wall-to-wall tight match-ups,
the Saturday night AAMI Stadium Adelaide vs St Kilda winner seems destined to
supplant West Coast as flag favourite. And
for what it’s worth I think the Saints are on their way to winning only their
second ever premiership, although like the gurus at AFL HQ – I am hoping the
Swans can win it for the future of football in the last market where AFL is
still proving to be an acquired taste.