Here We Go! Here We Go! Here We……

………… go to sleep.

Regular readers will know I am a complete football nut and I have explained in the past what great football coverage we have here in Australia in my post called English football on Australian TV. So it was with great excitement that I looked forward to watching my first World Cup here in Australia.

Picture courtesy of additionalmodernism

Of course, England expects. After all it’s been a very long time since the late and great Bobby Moore lifted the trophy. So, unravelling my pullout FIFA World Cup chart, courtesy of one of our many local free magazines, I excitedly checked out the times and days of all of the important games that I really did not want to miss.

First I looked for England’s opening game against the USA. It was scheduled for Sunday, and the kick-off time was four thirty……………. IN THE MORNING! Okay, what about their next game against Algeria? Well, they’re playing that one on Saturday, kick-off time………. oh no, not again! It’s 4.30 AM.

What about a World Cup Finals themselves? 4.30 AM. What about the semi-finals? Yes, you guessed it, 4.30 a.m. Both of them. Don’t get me wrong, I am a bit of a night owl. When Tottenham beat Chelsea in the League Cup a couple of years ago, I stayed up until gone four o’clock in the morning watching that one.

But the game was finished by then, not half an hour away from starting! 23 of the 60 odd games being played in this World Cup kick-off at 4:30 AM Australian time, and that pretty much includes all of the real important games. So Australia is not the best place to be to watch World Cup 2010. But it’s not all bad, the other games kick-off at either 9:30 PM or at midnight.

But even for me, watching six hours of football a day is a little overwhelming. So I thought I would be able to get by just watching the 5:30 PM daily SBS show “FIFA World Cup MOTD Highlights” It’s on for one hour and I was pretty confident it would show about 15 minutes worth of highlights from each of the three games that day. But no! They actually pick one game as the “Match of the Day” and show almost an hour’s worth of highlights from that.

So I do look over at the UK TV listings with a little envy at ITV’s one hour highlights show with action from ALL three games of the day. Still, I suspect I will get by, because fortunately, the World Cup isn’t talked about here in Australia as much as it is elsewhere around the world. Even less so since Australia got thumped 4 – 0 by Germany. (What did they expect?) And since New Zealand picked up a point, well, as we say in football “it’s all gone quiet over there (well, here).” Australians hate it when New Zealand gets one over on them.

But what this means is that I can record all those important 4:30 a.m. kickoffs and watch them later at a more respectable time.

Having said all of that, I am off out now (it’s around 7:15 PM here) to meet the boys for a beer and to watch tonight’s big game. Who’s playing? Well, it’s Queensland vs. New South Wales of course!

Yes, tonight it’s game two of State of Origin. Australians sure will be talking about that plenty.