George Hamilton and rugby

Shelflife

Dont know why they persist with employing this man.

No feel for the game,
Knowledge of the rules is poor,
player recognition is poor,
tactical awareness is poor.

for a professional he leaves a lot to be desired and it reflects badly on the national broadcaster that this is the best they can come up with.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Shelflife wrote: »

Dont know why they persist with employing this man.

No feel for the game,
Knowledge of the rules is poor,
player recognition is poor,
tactical awareness is poor.

for a professional he leaves a lot to be desired and it reflects badly on the national broadcaster that this is the best they can come up with.

He is not patricularly good comentating at athletics either.

IMO its a way of employing one man who isn't patricularly poor at a few sports and fills 6 or 7 points in the total RTE broadcasting team.

EDIT Whats worse he is qualified as a rugby referee

Shelflife

EDIT Whats worse he is qualified as a rugby referee

Ypu cant be serious, that really makes it worse. he actually knows the rules yet manages to give the impression that he doesnt.:rolleyes:

In fairness, he's really very good at pronouncing everyone's names.

Dutchie

Lads what do you expect from a guy only earning a mere €220,000 a year for his services;)

laugh

Dutchie wrote: »

Lads what do you expect from a guy only earning a mere €220,000 a year for his services;)

This country really is a basket case.

[Jackass]

I liked it when he confused Toner with Sexton.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Shelflife wrote: »

EDIT Whats worse he is qualified as a rugby referee

Ypu cant be serious, that really makes it worse. he actually knows the rules yet manages to give the impression that he doesnt.:rolleyes:

To be honest its the first time I've heard it too and the source I have is wikipedia so I can't be certain

yosser hughes

It begs the question,where are the others? Nugent and the other idiot? In fact how many people are employed in the sports dept? Maybe George pulled rank as his Ulster brethren are in town.

durkadurka

Anyone remember his early days on rugby, talking about 'touchdowns'?

Foxtrol

[Jackass] wrote: »

I liked it when he confused Toner with Sexton.

I liked it when he didn't realise that SOB was sent to the sin bin.

It is beyond me how a commentator (and in fairness the whole rte team) can miss a player getting a yellow card, the player walking off the pitch, the PA announcement of the yellow card, the player missing from play for 10 minutes and then the player eventually returning.

BBC 2 missed it too.

It wasn't televised, the only people who noticed it were those clued into the ref link or else at the game tbh.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Its missed on the magners leage live tracker thing too

http://www.magnersleague.com/tools/matchdaylive.php?fixid=145101&referer=www.magnersleague.com

Foxtrol

Deleted User wrote: »

BBC 2 missed it too.

It wasn't televised, the only people who noticed it were those clued into the ref link or else at the game tbh.

BBC definitely mentioned it in their post match analysis (i flicked over while rte took a break). Surely the rte commentary team were in the ground and failing that someone on the production team there should have realised Leinster were down a player. Even just watching TV I'd noticed that SOB had gone very quiet. I thought something was up as he's not the type of player that you expect to be missing from your screen for large chunks of the match.

Foxtrol

Foxtrol wrote: »

BBC definitely mentioned it in their post match analysis (i flicked over while rte took a break). Surely the rte commentary team were in the ground and failing that someone on the production team there should have realised Leinster were down a player. Even just watching TV I'd noticed that SOB had gone very quiet. I thought something was up as he's not the type of player that you expect to be missing from your screen for large chunks of the match.

I was watching it on BBC, roughly 8 minutes after the sin bin offence the commentator was counting players and substitutions, and realised that SOB had been binned.

Foxtrol

Deleted User wrote: »

I was watching it on BBC, roughly 8 minutes after the sin bin offence the commentator was counting players and substitutions, and realised that SOB had been binned.

Thats not the best either but to be fair those watching rte are still waiting for George to realise it

CatFromHue

meh, i didnt think he was that bad

doesnt matter who is commentating on the game people are still going to give out about them

GerM

yosser hughes wrote: »

It begs the question,where are the others? Nugent and the other idiot? In fact how many people are employed in the sports dept? Maybe George pulled rank as his Ulster brethren are in town.

Nugent was at the game as a supporter and, as far as I am aware, is more senior within RTE than Hamilton.

johnnysmack

We get to watch irish teams play in the magners league every week on free to air tv yet somebody always has a problem with it.

First people were giving out about TG4 and not understanding the language now giving out about one of the longest serving commentators in RTE sports commentating on one match, he's not there every week.

I couldnt care less if it was mickey mouse commentating in Klingon, im just happy to be able watch my team or any irish team each week.

durkadurka

GerM wrote: »

Nugent was at the game as a supporter and, as far as I am aware, is more senior within RTE than Hamilton.

Nugent is head of sport afaik.

CIARAN_BOYLE

GerM wrote: »

Nugent was at the game as a supporter and, as far as I am aware, is more senior within RTE than Hamilton.

Nugent is the group head of sport AFAIK

durkadurka

Great minds....

PhatPiggins

Foxtrol wrote: »

I liked it when he didn't realise that SOB was sent to the sin bin.

It is beyond me how a commentator (and in fairness the whole rte team) can miss a player getting a yellow card, the player walking off the pitch, the PA announcement of the yellow card, the player missing from play for 10 minutes and then the player eventually returning.

What was worse about that passage of play is that he rabbited on for 2 minutes about the ref awarding the try to (the Ulster) number 20 (was actually SOB getting yellow)but Wannenberg was having none of it and thought it was a superb piece of analysis when the replay showed it was Wannenbergs try :pac:

I honestly think 90% of the posters on here could do a better job

PhatPiggins

johnnysmack wrote: »

We get to watch irish teams play in the magners league every week on free to air tv yet somebody always has a problem with it.

First people were giving out about TG4 and not understanding the language now giving out about one of the longest serving commentators in RTE sports commentating on one match, he's not there every week.

I couldnt care less if it was mickey mouse commentating in Klingon, im just happy to be able watch my team or any irish team each week.

Thats well and good but I'm willing to pay money not to have to listen to mugs like Hamilton & Nugent but can't since Setanta lost the rights.

At this stage I'll watch it in Welsh on S4C then on RTE. TG4's coverage doesn't bother me, can only understand about 4 words in 40 but at least their commentators are slightly passionate.

johnnysmack

PhatPiggins wrote: »

Thats well and good but I'm willing to pay money not to have to listen to mugs like Hamilton & Nugent but can't since Setanta lost the rights.

Mute button?

Duckworth_Luas

George Hamilton was initially a rugby commentator with an Ulster radio station I believe.

JustinDee

If George Hamilton did your head in that much, you could have switched to BBC NI.

Personally, he doesn't bother me. He's actually pretty knowledgable. So what if he makes a blooper on live TV? There are worse commentators out there on ESPN, Sky, Setanta and BBC, and even worse pundits.
I just watch the game.

mikedragon32

As soon as I realised that the game was also on the beeb, I switched. I thought that watching through Ulster coloured specs would be better, turns out the commentary was very objective.

Hamilton is awful. I think I'd rather listen to nails dragging on a blackboard.

kevin99

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

George Hamilton was initially a rugby commentator with an Ulster radio station I believe.

He worked for what was that BBC radio 2 sports, commentating on football every week.
When he wasn't going to get a television commentating job with BBC he returned to Ireland and joined RTE.
He is a good football commentator.

chughes

A discussion about George Hamilton ??

I sense some danger here.

Shelflife

A couple of posters have suggested that we should switch channels and basically be happy that we have the match on TV, and if he makes a mistake or two shure so what.

Sorry this man is a well paid professional and he constantly mixed up players on both teams, didnt understand what was going on at the ulster try time, missed the sin bin and who scored the try( i knew straight away just from listening to the ref that o brien was gone).

he tried to explain/clarify matters and still got them wrong, trimbles big hit just mystified him even when he saw the replay.

look its not free to air we pay €160 every year and we get this crap from a commentator who clearly wasnt bothered and clearly hadnt prepared at all, changing channels/mute button options are abit like buying a car with a sun roof that doesnt work and being told to leave the windows down shure tis the same thing.

Its very poor fare from rte and they are the people who shoud be setting the standards.

chughes get your coat !!! ;)

So e-mail RTÉ if it's that big a deal.

I get that people come on to vent their frustrations, and that's all fine and dandy, but if it actually bothers you more so than having a whinge wont cure it, do something about it.

It's not rocket science.

Hippo

What's extraordinary is the toleration of his errors by his employers. I've never heard a commentator make more player recognition errors than in his commentary last night, I gave up counting after the seventh. If he made that many commentating on a football international, he'd be out on his arse.

Shelflife

Deleted User wrote: »

So e-mail RTÉ if it's that big a deal.

I get that people come on to vent their frustrations, and that's all fine and dandy, but if it actually bothers you more so than having a whinge wont cure it, do something about it.

It's not rocket science.

I intend to emmet, its not a biggie, but when your watching the game you expect at least that he would know the difference between sexton and toner, and best and botha and seeing as he is at the game he should have seen that o brien was carded.
its just annoying to see so many errors while watching a game.

CatFromHue

in fairness ulster used all 8 of their subs and leinster used 7 in the second half.

in the official report of the game on the magners league website they didnt mention sobs yellow (they do now though).

someone on leinster fans was having a go at the quality of the commentators on bbc so its fairly subjective.

funky penguin

The SOB yellow card was missed by 90% of the media, even in today's match report in STimes it was absent, unfair to call him on that.

I can't fault him for enthusiasm, but he clearly has only a passing knowledge of the game.

tolosenc

Any idea why the match isn't on the RTE Player?

Trojan

I was at the match and I'm slightly embarassed to say, but I missed the yellow card too

[Jackass]

I'm going to throw it out there. Ryle Nugent is one of my favourite rugby commentators.

Himself with Tony Ward are the best.

Some great games for Ireland in glory moments where they both go mental (Tony Wards YESSSSSS!! springs to mind at O'Garas Grande Slam winning drop goal) and it's like listening to two people who, fair enough mightn't be the best pundits of the sport, but genuinely support the teams they're commentating on, and really get into the game, they get tense and add to the tension as a result, they celebrate scores and genuinely cheer when we win etc, and for me, it adds to the experience and atmosphere if I can't make it to the game.

I've never understood why so many people don't like him.

George Hamilton on the other hand, I'm pretty sure screamed "RAY HOUGHTON" at one point during the game.

Used to absolutely despise Ryle, but being over here has really really made me miss him.

CatFromHue

i never liked bill mclaren, his voice / accent was drab.

i did like jim sherwin and still like ralph keyes

i also like donal lenihan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5WS8psbtI4

he is biased and makes no bones about it :P

Hippo

CatFromHue wrote: »

i never liked bill mclaren, his voice / accent was drab.

i did like jim sherwin and still like ralph keyes

i also like donal lenihan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5WS8psbtI4

he is biased and makes no bones about it :P

Jim Sherwin? Ralph Keyes?

Wow.

wixfjord

CatFromHue wrote: »

i never liked bill mclaren, his voice / accent was drab.

i did like jim sherwin and still like ralph keyes

i also like donal lenihan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5WS8psbtI4

he is biased and makes no bones about it :P

That was a TREMENJUS tackle.
FFS Donal, get another word adjective :rolleyes:

ambid

tolosenc wrote: »

Any idea why the match isn't on the RTE Player?

Maybe the contract requires them to wait until after Setanta's highlights programme on Sunday evening?

thebaz

ryle nugent gets a fair bit of stick here - i think he is good, knowledgeable and makes games sound interesting - Hamilton hasn't a clue in comparison, never states players names, due to lack of knowledge , dreadful at soccer too - still not as bad as fred cogley

jacothelad

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

George Hamilton was initially a rugby commentator with an Ulster radio station I believe.

He worked for BBC NI and then RTE. He was head hunted to London and BBC sports including Grandstand. His wife hated London so he came back to Ireland and RTE. George went to the same scvhool as me, MCB, which is a rugby school as those who know about rugby will be aware. He and I were in the same year. George was a big soccer guy though and a fine player. He's a better commentator than Nugent who sounds like the 'Priest with the most boring voice" out of Father Ted.