Seven's Big League Replay

Aug 27, 2014
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Not sure if a thread like this exists already, but speaking for myself I miss the time when Saturday night I looked forward to the replay show on channel 7 from 6-30 pm to 8-30 pm called Sevens Big League.
As video recording machines still relatively new then, hard to find games of that era from that show around. I think in our household we used to record over them after watching as video tapes tended to have about 3 hours worth of recording on them. If someone wanted to tape a movie a footy replay would not last long on it in a big household.

If anyone finds any on youtube would love to see more as it appears more and more pop up recently.
Just watched this little gem of last quarter of Richmond v Essendon in early season of 1981 at MCG.
Great to see Flea Weightman, Geoff Raines, Merv Neagle, Neale Daniher and David Cloke kicking style like Casboult but ball still goes through for goals.

Feel free to add more links to share any games you discover.
 
Aug 27, 2014
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Interesting finding this just now and beginning to watch.
Richmond with Michael Roach and Brian Taylor in same team. Very odd to see in opening minutes, Michael Roach kicking a ball from half back flank and see Taylor starting full forward.
Richmond with Kevin Bartlett, Maurice Rioli, Dale Weightman, Geoff Raines and David Cloke in same team too. Most talented list Richmond ever had in my time.
North with Malcolm Blight, Keith Greig, David Dench, Ross Glendinning, Gary Dempsey, Phil Carman, Bruce Abernethy and the Krakouer brothers. That would break a salary cap now. Also fun to see Andrew Demetriou in number 28 for North and Malthouse still playing for Richmond.
 

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Enjoy watching the old ABC Winners program from the 80s on Fox Footy

But growing up in Victoria the Big League Saturday evening on 7 was the main footy show !!
 
Aug 27, 2014
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This from Round 20 1983...it includes the full theme song from the year (see if you can name the players featured throughout the theme)



Pity there is not the whole replay on that night available.
Remember the game well. Probably my favourite home and away game I ever gone to.
Third quarter was something really special to see live.

Take up your challenge to try to name the players in the opening segment.
First one is David McMahon of Fitzroy.
Ross Glendinning of North with Abernethy and a Krakouer coming up to him after a goal scored.
Essendon player in melee not certain on. Take a guess it is Max Crow.
Mike Fitzpatrick next.
Kevin Bartlett, Simon Madden, Hawk coach Allan Jeans.
The North player next I not sure of. Guess Xavier Tanner or Daryl Sutton but really little idea.
Simon Beasley of Dogs next. Then Michael Turner and some other Geelong player in 15 but not sure whom. Terry Bright ?
Then Wayne Johnston from early goal in 1982 grand final celebrating.
46 for Collingwood taking a mark I got no idea.
Trevor Barker for Saints next.
Not sure of Melbourne player but might be some guy called Richards.
Final player was John Roberts for Swans.
 
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Pity there is not the whole replay on that night available.
Remember the game well. Probably my favourite home and away game I ever gone to.
Third quarter was something really special to see live.

Take up your challenge to try to name the players in the opening segment.
First one is David McMahon of Fitzroy.
Ross Glendinning of North with Abernethy and a Krakouer coming up to him after a goal scored.
Essendon player in melee not certain on. Take a guess it is Max Crow.
Mike Fitzpatrick next.
Kevin Bartlett, Simon Madden, Hawk coach Allan Jeans.
The North player next I not sure of. Guess Xavier Tanner or Daryl Sutton but really little idea.
Simon Beasley of Dogs next. Then Michael Turner and some other Geelong player in 15 but not sure whom. Terry Bright ?
Then Wayne Johnston from early goal in 1982 grand final celebrating.
46 for Collingwood taking a mark I got no idea.
Trevor Barker for Saints next.
Not sure of Melbourne player but might be some guy called Richards.
Final player was John Roberts for Swans.

I was going to go with Grant Fowler! And the Geelong bloke in #15...Bernard Toohey.
 
strange that it went from 2 hours to 90 minutes by the time "AFL Today" started in the early 90s (6pm-730pm).... only going to 830pm for finals.

A few factors probably at play that I can think of. In the 1980's Channel 7 had access to 3 games on a Saturday, one game was providing pictures to the ABC, another was from the ABC's pictures and a 3rd was basically with a single camera. Then with up to 6 games played on a Saturday they'd then need time to get through those results plus other segments. By the 1990's with a game usually on Friday Night (though not every week) and 2, sometimes 3 games on a Sunday depending on if the Eagles or Crows were at home they'd be able to run the same highlights packages from the 1980's in a shorter span. It was about that time that the Bears also started playing Saturday night home games at Carrara which went live into Melbourne every few weeks, so they had to curtail the replay to go to that game.

Not sure about the other thing I can think of, but it was around that time that Hey Hey It's Saturday was at its ratings peak for a Saturday Night, so perhaps they didn't want to have too much of the footy against it.
 
Aug 27, 2014
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ha ha
So bad it is funny.
Surely this is from a bloopers tape at the time.



and another shocker but think I remember actually seeing this go on the air.
Incredibly bad ha ha.
 
Aug 27, 2014
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Just found a random full recording of the two hours on youtube of Seven's Big League for round 20, 1983.
So you get to re-visit even the funny 1980's adds on tv at the time and very strange seeing a young Jeff Kennett at the start doing some sort of Tattslotoo thing at 6:30 pm for channel 7.
This show used to go from 6-30 pm to 8-30 pm each Saturday night during the season. So would start straight after the 7 news that finished at 6-30 pm,
Over on channel 2 the Saturday Footy Review show was on between 6pm to 7pm before their 7 pm, news, so if you were at home you watched channel 2 from 6pm to 6-30 pm and then switched over to channel 7 at 6-30 pm. Better still, just record the bit from 6-30 pm to 7pm on channel 2, to watch later on video recorder.

Palmer's Punchline would come on after the first replay was over for a few minutes and then onto the second match of the day.
Basically it would show the three best games of the Saturday afternoon with the best 40 minutes of each game shown.

I actually went to the Carlton v Hawks game this day so remember getting home later that night to watch this that was recorded on VCR as was not home by time it was on.

Thankfully some people , keep their recordings. which I guess is how this got uploaded to youtube.

 
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Just found a random full recording of the two hours on youtube of Seven's Big League for round 20, 1983.
So you get to re-visit even the funny 1980's adds on tv at the time and very strange seeing a young Jeff Kennett at the start doing some sort of Tattslotoo thing at 6;30 pm for channel 7.
This show used to go from 6-30 pm to 8-30 pm each Saturday night during the season. So would start straight after the 7 news that finished at 6-30 pm,
Over on channel 2 the Saturday Footy Review show was on between 6pm to 7pm before their 7 pm, news, so if you were at home you watched channel 2 from 6pm to 6-30 pm and then switched over to channel 7 at 6-30 pm. Better still, just record the bit from 6-30 pm to 7pm on channel 2, to watch later on video recorder.

Palmer's Punchline would come on after the first replay was over for a few minutes and then onto the second match of the day.
Basically it would show the three best games of the Saturday afternoon with the best 40 minutes of each game shown.

I actually went to the Carlton v Hawks game this day so remember getting home later that night to watch this that was recorded on VCR as was not home by time it was on.

Thankfully some people , keep their recordings. which I guess is how this got uploaded to youtube.


This guy has uploaded a bunch of full telecasts of Sevens Big League, The Winners, A Pleasant Sunday Morning, the ABC Saturday replay show, Saturday Night Replay, ABC Grandstand over the last couple of years. He found a whole heap of these at a trash and treasure market 20 years ago apparently! Someone was selling the tapes as "blanks" to be taped over!

His YouTube channel is aussie80s, not sure if he still posts here aussie80s



A chance discovery by historian Armin Richter at a trash and treasure market almost 20 years ago has not only fuelled the YouTube channel ‘Aussie80s’, it may have saved thousands of hours of footy history.

“I was going to markets looking for exactly that and it was just sheer luck that I found the needle in the haystack,” Richter tells CODE Sports.
*********
At the Wantirna market in 2004 he hit the jackpot.

“One stall had 10 tapes which had 80s football written on the spine, which I bought. I asked the seller if he had any more and he said he had picked up a bunch from hard rubbish and had more at home.”

Richter went to the seller’s house later that day and was amazed to find there were another 160 tapes. He quickly snapped them up for $140 and headed home to find if there was anything on them of interest.

“It was complete episodes of football shows that I had been looking for more than 15 years,” Richter recalls.

Even better, they‘d all been taped on long play, so each tape had more than seven hours of footage. Richter now had more than 1000 hours of football replay and panel shows spanning from 1983 to 1992, his sweet spot of footy fandom.
*********
The saved tapes are the jewel in Richter’s collection, but are only part of it. He estimates he has more than 4000 hours of footage in boxes of tapes or DVDs, but is not the only one.

There is a community of collectors and ‘Aussies80s’ is not the only YouTube channel dealing with lost retro footy vision. There are channels devoted to most AFL clubs with rare lost games and news segments gathered from tapes.
 

aussie80s

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This guy has uploaded a bunch of full telecasts of Sevens Big League, The Winners, A Pleasant Sunday Morning, the ABC Saturday replay show, Saturday Night Replay, ABC Grandstand over the last couple of years. He found a whole heap of these at a trash and treasure market 20 years ago apparently! Someone was selling the tapes as "blanks" to be taped over!

His YouTube channel is aussie80s, not sure if he still posts here aussie80s

Yes, that's my channel and I use the same name here. Glad someone finds them interesting.
 
Aug 27, 2014
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there are no other teams worthy
Yes, that's my channel and I use the same name here. Glad someone finds them interesting.
They are awesome mate. My favourite thing on youtube is to find old footy videos, cricket videos and music ones.
Thank you so much for loading them onto there. Absolute legend!!!
I will have to do some myelf someday as I know I have video recordings of footy but sadly my Mum recorded over many of the Saturday night replay shows with Gardending shows .....crazy...
 
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