James Ihaka
AUCKLAND (New Zealand Herald/Pacific Media Watch): A self-confessed "leaguie" and Māori Television anchor for its Rugby World Cup coverage, Te Arahi Maipi, is proving a tough nut to crack.
Weeks after Sky Television announced the make-up of its commentary teams for the tournament starting in just over nine weeks, the Huntly-born and raised Maipi isn't giving away anything about who will accompany him behind the microphone.
"But what I can tell you is it's looking really exciting - we have a strong international flavour to our rugby commentary which we are really happy about," he said.
"One of our aims was to be the global marae of the Rugby World Cup. Not only do we want to hear the voices of our own people but we want an engaged perspective from the UK, the Pacific Islands and across Australia."
Māori Television is the lead free-to-air broadcaster, showing all 48 games of the tournament - although 32 of those will be delayed.
Its Te Reo channel will carry the 48 matches called entirely in Maori by a team headed by experienced commentator Hemana Waaka.
Maipi said the non te reo matches would have 5 percent Māori language content - similar to the station's coverage of New Zealand Breakers' basketball games.
He said viewers were spoiled for choice but the station's target audience was not the hard-core rugby fans wanting all matches live and serious analysis.
"If you're hard-core like that there's Sky, but obviously we still want to be accurate and informative .. the angle we are taking is more of a celebration and festival feel," he said.
"We are after the people interested in the event, not just the games, and we want to give a different view on things, to find out information about teams like the Russians.
"We want to get a little bit more human interest and entertainment in there as well as having good rugby calls."
Come the business end of the tournament, Maipi says, the All Blacks, Australia, South Africa and France are likely to feature.
"At home with the amount of quality players we have you have to say the All Blacks are favourites, but the South Africans and Australians are very good teams and they are coming into their own with Super Rugby.
"They have some top shelf players with very good combinations throughout their teams - but you can never discount the French, as we know all too well."
To mark Māori Language Week, the New Zealand Herald today also published this article in te reo Māori.
Pacific Media Watch
