My name is Jeff Wilson and I am trapped inside the Sky Sport Now menu
Sport Review #288
Good morning New Zealand. Goldie here.
Have you seen Superman II? In its epic climactic scene, disgraced Kryptonian military leader General Zod and his cohorts are banished to the phantom zone. Trapped, inside a two dimensional prison forever more.
I don’t raise this as an off season family movie night recommendation you could enjoy with a nice central Otago Pinot and half a box of Favourites.
No. It’s because I, Jeff Wilson, am also trapped. Trapped, inside the the Sky Sport Now menu. Things are different in here.
I don’t even have Mils and JK with me.
I’m just trying to catch up on all the Olympics. Men’s rugby sevens. Women’s rugby sevens. It’s a festival of sport.
But we only recently got rid of the Sky box. Loved the Sky box. We had nine. Trusty remote bigger than your forearm. Years worth of Breakdown saved for future reference. Pause and rewind buttons worn to a nub.
But now we have Sky Sport Now. There’s no up button down button. Things are hard to find. One menu says rugby sevens pool play, but is actually rowing. Another says rugby sevens highlights, but is actually Snoop Dogg. What the fudge?
I have invested considerable time in this menu, and cannot navigate my way out. I have contemplated going into my immaculately clean garage and removing a Sky box from its original packaging and re-installing it before Adine Marie Kondo-s the dickens out of it.
Look, this is nothing against the internet. In fairness, the last time I used it was at the Otago Uni computer labs. Compulsory paper. I was happy to take the B+ and go ‘That’s enough internet for you, Jeffy-boy.’ Never been back.
All I want is to see Kiwis doing well on the world stage and be proud. I will give it another go, but if I keep getting shown walking and not rugby sevens, the box is coming back.
Thanks for reading - Richard
This week's best NZ sport content
Fantastic wrap on last’s night’s medal-heavy session in the rowing from Suzanne McFadden and Adam Julian Julian [Locker Room]
Sky has the games, and paid shitloads for it, back when sky boxes were in every home like landlines - both are on the way out, so is it even worth it for TV companies to show events like these? [NZ Herald]
I thought the opening ceremony was amazing, when you have iconic shit everywhere like Paris you need to do something wild all over it. Sport Review’s only quibble was Zinedine’s suit / white trainer combo, but Anna Rawhiti-Connell was forced to address the online rumours the event was a satanic bacchanalia [Spinoff]
Andrew Mulligan gets a question in to the Team USA Basketball big dogs [Crowd Goes Wild]
Jamie Bell tells the story of our Olympic Committee’s formation in Otago, leading to us competing as New Zealand for the first time in 1920, rather than in a joint team with Australia [Sportsfreak]
Extremely solid suggestions on what Olympic sports to bin, and what to replace them with [Spinoff]
Video nasty
Finally.
Long read
Classic long read about the Bling Ring, bored teenagers who burgled celebrities’ mansions to nick a little bit of star power for themselves [Vanity Fair]
BTW, I’m now collecting all the Sport Review long reads over at my work website, so if you’re ever caught short, you can find them all in one place, cheers.
Recommendation
Right, in ‘bloody tragedy’ news, we lost The Chills’ Martin Phillips this week, a complicated, self sabotaging man who was also an actual genius at making pop music. You can do pretty much anything with a catchy tune, electric guitar and wooly jumper gang.
You can watch the tremendous documentary on his later life for free here this week, check out the Facebook page that was selling off his archives here, but most importantly, put the music on.