The winter sports season is getting under way properly now with the beginning of the rugby season this weekend.
Tonight, we have Championship football on SkySportsVillaLeeds when they stage Leeds-Boro at 7.45pm, so Banno will be nice and quiet at least until 9.30pm. We can also show the opening game of the rugby calendar when Bristol take on Bath, also at 7.45pm , on BT, but you’ll have to ask at the bar for that.
We might even keep Banno quiet beyond the football, although heaven help us all if Leeds win, because the Dell Tech Championships golf will also be on.
Saturday begins with the fourth test. It’s finely poised at the moment with England 21 runs behind India with all of their second innings wickets standing, at least for now. That’ll be on one of our screens from Noon but at 12.30 we’ll also be showing Leicester-Liverpool on Sky. After that we can bring you rugby with Gloucester-Northampton at 2pm on BT2, but we can only show this if there is nobody watching the cricket. Then at 3pm we’ll have the normal results on one of our screens before we switch that screen to the Man City-Newcastle match at 5.30pm on BT1. After the football and cricket are out of the way we can then move onto the golf.
On Sunday we’ll start again with the cricket at Noon before we switch one of our screens to the Cardiff-Arsenal game at 1.30pm on Sky. Then at 2.10pm the Italian Grands Prix starts and, if nobody is watching the other two things that are on we can switch one screen to that. At 4pm our Sunday football finishes with what could be a pretty good game between Watford, who’ve had a great start this year, and Spurs, who look like real challengers after their win at Old Trafford last week. The golf follows to wrap up our weekend at 5pm.
Next week we’re going into an international break, so sport will be harder to find on our screens. But we can promise you international football later in the week and an England game next Saturday night.