Colin Vickery: Let’s be honest, The Footy Show died last year
The Footy Show may have been axed last night, but the 2019 version of Nine’s long-running program doesn’t deserve any tearful farewells — because it ended on September 27 last year, writes Colin Vickery.
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“It is a sad day.” That is what one of the people in upper management at Channel 9 said to me this morning in the wake of last night’s axing of The Footy Show.
Well I’m sorry, but I won’t be shedding any tears because as far as I’m concerned The Footy Show ended on September 27 last year.
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That is when Nine aired the final edition of The Grand Final Footy Show with Eddie McGuire and Sam Newman.
The previous week, Newman delivered an emotional opening monologue announcing he was quitting.
“This station won’t, or can’t, tell us if this show will be on next year, either in this format or in some other format,” Newman said.
“And they can’t tell me if I’ll be part of the show next year if it’s on.
“On the off-chance that this show is not on next year, this is the opportune time to say what I’m about to say.
“I will not be continuing. It’s opportune that I end my association with this show, and the network.”
It was McGuire and Newman, along with Trevor Marmalade who were synonymous with The Footy Show — not the bunch who hosted this year’s bastardised version.
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The show that Anthony “Lehmo” Lehmann, Neroli Meadows, Dylan Alcott, and Brendan Fevola presented was called The Footy Show but it in no way, shape or form lived up to the legacy.
Realistically, the new-look show should have been given a different name and if that had happened the headlines today would be “Nine axes footy program after eight episodes”.
Then the reboot would have been mentioned in the same breath as other recent short-lived TV flops including Changing Rooms and Chris & Julia’s Sunday Night Takeaway.
Instead, everyone is getting emotional wanting to wax lyrical about The Footy Show’s 26 seasons and 735 episodes.
No crying from me. If I had my way, this year’s show would be redacted from any account of The Footy Show’s history.
Right from the start, the 2019 version sputtered. The team of Lehmann, Meadows, Alcott and Fevola was thrown together in a rush and it showed.
Nine and McGuire’s JAM TV, which produced the show, dumped the traditional format of previewing each round’s upcoming matches with the player ins and outs.
Instead, the decision was made to go all-out comedy and entertainment in a doomed attempt to play ratings-hit rival The Front Bar at its own game.
But blind Freddie could see that Nine’s new team weren’t in spitting distance of Mick Molloy, Sam Pang and Andy Maher when it comes to landing laughs.
A month or so back I wrote that the new-look version of The Footy Show had some glimmers of hope and deserved a chance.
But I had to eat my words because each and every week the show got worse instead of better.
Last week I tuned in, hated what I saw, switched to The Front Bar, was thoroughly entertained by the hilarious banter with guests Nicky Winmar and Patrick Dangerfield and never went back.
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Last night I gave The Footy Show another go but a painfully unfunny “guess the mother” segment with Shane Crawford and Daisy Thomas had me immediately reaching for the remote control.
I reckon that would have been the experience of most former fans of The Footy Show over the past two months.
No wonder last week’s show crashed to a dismal 53,000 viewers in Melbourne — a fifth of the audience for The Front Bar.
The 2019 version of The Footy Show doesn’t deserve any tearful farewells. Instead, it should be quickly erased from our collective memory.
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