How to watch sport in the middle of the night
There's plenty of sport in the early hours coming up - the BLACKCAPS and WHITE FERNS are playing in UAE and the West Indies respectively, and the All Blacks and Black Ferns are on their European tour.
For you, that means extremely careful time management. Here, we discuss some of the choices you need to be making right now to survive sport in the middle of the night.
Home or away
If you commit to the pub for the big game, the down side is a long period of time in a dimly lit bar. Brilliant on the surface, but when you're on your seventh handle and third bowl of chips, 'Gappy Dale' is the only person to talk to and there's still an hour to kick off, time drags slower than pushing a bike home with two flat tires.
Home has the advantage of being close - but getting up without waking everyone is tricky. Wake your partner and you'll be in Trouble. Wake a toddler and you'll have questions all through the big game. Pro tip - sleep on the couch, but watch the blood curdling screams for the big wickets / tries or your neighbours will be round to investigate.
Staying up or getting up
Back at uni it was simple. A 4am kick off meant a 4pm start at the pub, get booted out at midnight, back to Feral Stu's pad for the afterparty, taxi to your flat at 3.30am for 23 cheese toasties and three litres of milk before falling asleep with the TV on full volume at 4.03am.
Now, you're busy with a family, a job and a hungry LinkedIn profile - no amount of kombucha or poke bowls can make up for lost sleep, so you go to bed freakishly early, endlessly tossing and turning before drifting off at 2am, waking up to the third alarm, getting out on the coach and falling asleep at 4.03am.
Live or delayed
Sure, you can MySKY the match and get everyone over for champagne and bacon on the BBQ, but be aware of NZ Herald news alerts, your annoying workmates texting you and your neighbour marching up and down the back lawn loudly reading a match report. In 2018, it is absolutely impossible to avoid a result. Don't bother, watch it live.
Drunk or sober
Drunk is fun - but be aware your intoxication cycle is way out of whack at that hour. If you're drunk at 3am, you're going to get a hangover at 9am, which is an abysmal, abysmal time for a hangover. You could absolutely attempt to keep drinking through until bedtime, but that's basically the Hillary Step of alcohol consumption, and makes the Bunnings run super awkward when you have to ask the sausage sizzle guys to drive you home. Maybe throw a single malt in your milo and play it low key.
Remember - there's plenty of matches on, so your system must be repeatable, sustainable and enjoyable for you, and possibly those around you. Good luck.
The week's best NZ sport writing
Wallace Chapman. Shane Warne. Together at last [RNZ]
Steve Deane meets WHITE FERN Bernie Bezuidenhout, who binned a golf career and stood down from international cricket for three years to play for NZ [Newsroom]
Rugby takes sick pleasure in confusing the shit out of its audience - Scotty Stevenson argues a little transparency would go a long way [Spinoff]
The Thames Valley Swamp Foxes won the Meads Cup this year after a bleak few years in the wilderness - Steve Hale has their story [Newsroom]
Sportsfreak on the long run of ODIs in front of the BLACKCAPS as they go about bettering their 2015 world cup heroics in England next year [Sportsfreak]
Video nasty
Skills comparison between Christian Cullen (the GOAT for mine), and some English winger. Watch for a iconic temple rub from the English coach.
Long read
The wondrous drama of the Red Sox - Dodgers baseball world series [New Yorker]
BONUS LINK - 'Can I get a McGangbang?' - the weird world of fast food secret menus. What would the fish n chip shop secret menu be? Hot dog in doughnut batter? Fish on a stick? Deep fried Hawaiian burger?!? [Lithub]
Selected weekend fixtures
BLACKCAPS v Pakistan second ODI starts at midnight tonight - we're 1-0 up in the three match series, great chance for an away series win - it's on SKY...
...while the WHITE FERNS start their Word T20 campaign in the West Indies against India at 4am Sunday, it's on SKY too
Rugby - the Black Ferns play France tomorrow morning at 9am, while the chaps play England in the big grudge match at HQ 4am Sunday. Set the alarm, it's on SKY
Bring back the gif
When you crop spray the lift on the way out.
