Sideline Sid Sports correspondant & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

While many facets of life over the ditch are the same as New Zealand – sports fans in Australia enjoy a major advantage when it comes to watching live sport on the box.

With live sport on free-to-air TVNZ and TV3 almost non-existent, our cousins in Oz enjoy unparalleled access to most of the best sporting contests in the lucky country and overseas.

The little Aussie battler, as the Aussie media like to constantly talk about, has free television sports choices we can only dream about.

Taking centre stage on our arrival was the rugby league State of Origin, where the common catchphrase is ‘Mate against mate' which literally means players who play alongside each other in the NRL become deadly enemies when pulling on the New South Wales' sky blue and Queensland's maroon jerseys.

The best bit for us two Western Bay tourists, who we're drawn into following the Origin action almost by default, was the three games were shown live on free-to-air Channel Nine.

We joined our Queensland new-found friends in sympathising with the cane toads' first two losses and revenge of the third game, thrashing of New South Wales.

While Queensland lost the Origin series for the first time in nine years, we were able to catch the action without paying a small monthly mortgage, as is the case with Sky Television in New Zealand.

Over the ditch the three commercial channels of seven, nine and 10 go head-to-head showing live sport, with the state broadcaster (ABC and SBC) also in the fight for sports fans' attention.

Each weekend there's live league on Fridays and Sundays on nine, with channel seven showing Australian rules.

Since we've been here the V8 super cars have been shown live, with the recent rugby test series between the Wallabies and England also taking centre stage.

Live Wimbledon, the Tour de France along, with every game of the World Cup as it happened, are just some of big world sporting events shown during June and July on free-to-air Aussie TV.

In a few days' time Channel Nine and SBS2 will cross over to Glasgow each night for continuous wall-to-wall coverage of the Commonwealth Games.

As usual the Aussie media is predicting unprecedented success for the Australian team.

The only way Kiwis in Australia will be able to keep up with the New Zealand triumphs will be courtesy of the internet, with nothing but Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie in the press and television coverage over here.

There's been a smattering of Kiwi coverage leading up to the games, with a story or two about the expected battle royal between the Aussie and Kiwi sides in the netball, and some chance given to Australia in the rugby sevens.

It's the upcoming battles for the Bledisloe Cup that's seen mention of the mighty All Blacks in the Australian media.

Always optimistic, the Australian press are upbeat about the chances of the Wallabies against our world champions.

However, as I told one Aussie rugby fan, they need to keep a photograph of the trans-Tasman rugby trophy to remind them what it looks like – as it's so long since it resided this side of the ditch.

Go the Mounties in this weekend's Baywide premier rugby final.