where can I watch televised Rugby League in Melbourne?

May 31, 2009 6:23 PM

MelbourneFilter: where can I watch televised Rugby League in Melbourne?

yep, i'm in town again, and the mighty South Sydney Rabbitohs are playing tonight. so, i'm wondering if there's any known pub (preferably in the CBD, Carlton, Fitzroy or Collingwood areas) where people might gather to watch Rugby League...?

bonus points if the place is a regular pub, not some kind of horrific sports bar.

as an example of what i'm looking for, the grungy, hipsterish Courthouse Hotel in Newtown (Sydney) is well known as an AFL pub, for aerial pingpong fans needing a sporting fix.

posted by UbuRoivas to sports, hobbies, & recreation (9 comments total)

*crickets chirping*
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:01 PM on May 31

This might help.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:49 PM on May 31

thanks, but unfortunately it only helps crash my browser.
posted by UbuRoivas at 8:46 PM on May 31

This might help.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:06 PM on May 31

ah, i'm at work, so chained to IE.

no probs, it's shitty weather - might watch the game on foxtel in the hotel. it's just nicer to have a bit of crowd atmosphere, but hey.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:34 PM on May 31

Most (well, many) pubs will have foxtel on somewhere, and if you ask them nicely they may even turn it to the rugby league channel.
posted by wilful at 10:23 PM on May 31

Rats... Probably too late, but I would have recommended Pugg's in Carlton on the corner of Drummond and Elgin Street. They have several screens and normally a crowd that like to watch matches. AFL is likely to be on the large screen, but there are smaller screens behind the bar.
posted by michswiss at 11:01 PM on May 31

no, still here...Pugg's - i think i know the place...Irish bar, yeh? Pugg Mahones, perhaps?
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:07 AM on June 1

Thanks for the advice, everybody. As it happened, I checked out Puggs, but by half an hour before kickoff, it didn't look like any kind of crowd was gathering, so I decided to leg it back to the hotel, where I could at least turn up the sound, drink takeaway beers, and watch the game naked. (not all of this is true)

Since this is my question, and has been answered, I might throw in a small anecdote about how I knew Pugg's...

It was an a disastrous "romantic" weekend in Melbourne. We were wandering around Carlton.

me: "oh, heh - Pugg Mahone's"
she: "huh, what?"
"that bar over there, the name's a pun on pogue mahone - gaelic for 'kiss my arse'"
"rubbish. nobody would call a bar that!"
"well, it IS an Irish bar..."
"probably a coincidence"
"coincidence? like they wouldn't know the meaning of pogue mahone...you know the band, The Pogues? they're named after the same phrase."
"bullshit. why are you making up lies like this? the owner is probably named Mahone, and he looks like a pug dog, so his nickname is Pugg Mahone..."

probably needless to say, that, and a hundred similar pointless niggles resulted in us breaking up right after that trip - another example of the definition: life (n): the process of attaching unpleasant memories to physical locations.

the bunnies got slaughtered in the game last night, too, after a terrible start. another example of the same process.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:52 PM on June 1