[Neil Jones]

I wonder if that's to do with the massive 3 / 2 / 1 on the walls of the arena and the lighting changing when the game starts- maybe the referee is having to sync his countdown to the arena lighting and graphics rather than the other way around and is slightly out at times, and whereas the Gladiators and contenders are going when the lights change the fraphics are timed to the whistle (if that makes sense? The game starting when the lights change whereas the on screen clock starting on the whistle and the two (lights and whistle being out of sync.)

The whole "3 / 2 / 1" thing quite often goes to pot and the lights, the sound the visuals and whatever are so far out from what Mark Clattenburg is saying its sort of hard to follow sometimes. You'd have thought they could synced that up in an edit suite - you expect it to an extent in a live environment to be a bit rougher.

We never had this problem back in the day because there was only one source of a game starting - and that was John Anderson. No flashing lights, no projected imagery, just a whistle.

These days you've got three or four different things going on, none of them are in sync and its perhaps hardly surprising it all becomes a visual disaster.