Ukraine - England fiasco need never happen again

England football fans can breathe easy – after the fiasco of the online-only coverage of the team's World Cup qualifier in Ukraine, the government has moved to protect such games so they can be seen on free-to-air TV.

The match, back in October, may have been a dead rubber but millions of fans were robbed of the chance to see their team in a competitive international.

The farcical situation arose because the FA did not actually own the rights to away World Cup qualification games. Setanta originally bought the rights to provide UK coverage from the Ukrainian FA, but when Setanta collapsed, no other UK broadcaster was prepared to pay the asking price.

So the 500,000 or so England fans who watched the game got to see a low-quality video feed featuring half an hour of Sven Goran-Eriksson's tedious analysis followed by a poor performance on the pitch. Talk about a slap in the face.

The good news is that a government review, headed by former FA chief David Davies, has recommended that all qualification games for World Cup and European Football Championship be reserved for free-to-air TV channels.

Additionally, home Ashes tests are covered in the report, though other home test matches are not. Wales is the only UK territory that has its Six Nations rugby games protected.

Online-only broadcasting of these 'crown jewels' was ruled out for the foreseeable future.

"The Panel remained convinced that, at least for the foreseeable future, despite the enormous changes in the media landscape, most people's first choice of how to view the bigger sporting events would be via what is still identifiably a television set," the review states.