Labour MP Austin Mitchell summed up the coverage in similarly disparaging terms.

"One hated Thames Armada. No Navy left so hordes of tatty boats. Queen freezing, BBC 5Live and TV commentary pathetic. A disgrace," he wrote.

Hahaha - No navy, tatty boats - Onlsow & Daisy in a tinny, classic.

And the weather, Hahaha - Long to RAIN over them.

INCENSED by an "unfair" Olympic draw, compared with the British hosts' "very comfortable" schedule, Australian hockey bosses - backed by the national Olympic Committee - are appealing to the sport's international governing body for a correction.

Kookaburras coach and hockey great Ric Charlesworth told the Herald last night he had never known a world-leading team to be so disadvantaged by a competition schedule. Asked whether it could cost his world No.1-ranked team a gold medal in London, he replied: "who knows?"

The draw for the men's competition at the London Games has Australia playing three of six matches in the round-robin tournament at 8.30am. It means the Australian team will need to rise at 5am three times to compete during a gruelling 13-day event that climaxes with an evening gold medal final. Great Britain, by comparison, have been given three matches starting at 7pm and two at 4pm. Australia's only night match is when they play the hosts.

"It's crazy," Charlesworth said. "And it's not like we're the 12th-ranked team in the tournament.

"How do you develop a routine around that program? At the Olympics it's hard enough as it is … and there's little difference between the best things. Small things make a difference. It already worries me that there are a range of things that we have wanted for this tournament and recent tournaments that we've been told 'no' to. I think they're trying to make it difficult for us. I hope that's not the case."

Charlesworth has already expressed strong concerns about the Olympic pitch after a test event this month, though his criticisms were shared by coaches of the British, Germany and Indian teams.

LONDON: South Africa have received an official apology from British hockey bosses on Wednesday after the apartheid anthem Die Stem was mistakenly played before their match in the pre-Olympic London Cup on Tuesday.

Marissa Langeni, chief executive of the South African Hockey Association, in a letter to tournament organisers, said the country "watched with disbelief as our team stood through what clearly was a most embarrassing and uncomfortable experience".

South Africa's women went on to beat their British counterparts 3-1 in their opening game and GB Hockey apologised on Wednesday for their embarrassing error.

"Great Britain Hockey, the organiser of the Investec London Cup, offers a full and unreserved apology to the South African women's hockey team and their supporters for mistakenly playing the wrong national anthem before South Africa's match with Great Britain on Tuesday afternoon," chief executive Sally Munday said.

The horror bus ride for the Australian sailors and officials came just after a busload of American athletes found themselves lost for more than four hours on a journey that should have taken 45 minutes following the introduction of "Olympics only" road lanes.

One US athlete tweeted during that journey that his colleagues were " sleepy, hungry and need to pee."

Damian Kelly, a media officer who was in the unfortunate Australian group, said that after a 23-hour flight from Australia they were pleased with their initial experience at Heathrow, which in recent months has seen immigration queues of more than two hours.

"They had special Olympic lanes so we raced through the customs process which was great," he said.

"But then we had to wait an hour and 45 minutes for a bus that was supposed to be waiting for us, and the actual trip took more than two hours and went all over the place.

"I think we visited everywhere on the Monopoly board except Mayfair.

"The driver said he had been flown in from Dublin for the job and admitted he was lost, and he hadn't been shown how to use the sat nav system on the bus.

"They also hadn't loaded the Olympic Village into the GPS system and some of our guys ended up trying to guide him to Stratford."

Having flown in at dawn the group did not reach the village until after 11 am, when they then needed to begin the lengthy process of collecting their kit and being assigned rooms.

The hiring of bus drivers who do not know London follows the continuing fiasco surrounding the security firm G4S, which admitted last week that it had failed to hire and train up to 3500 of the10,000 guards it was contracted to supply.

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They should have offered the unemployed free "trainers" and hoodies to drive the buses.