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I’m not monogamous when it comes to sport. Yes, I’ve had a long-standing relationship with rugby league, but it was always an open relationship, with the understanding that during the summer I’d spend some time with cricket.
In January, I’d see a bit of tennis on the side and in autumn and spring I could squeeze in a little flutter with the big horse-racing carnivals.
About 12 years ago I found myself fascinated by the style, elegance and slightly exotic nature of Arsenal under the coaching philopsophy of Arsene Wenger.
Sure, it meant some late nights and early mornings with the Premier League and European Champions League, but if I was prepared to forego a little sleep I could find room for them in my life without short-changing my other sporting loves.
After all, I’d been managing to burn both ends of the candle to keep my desire for tennis sated during Wimbledon and the French Open for years. I was certain I could manage without everything getting out of hand.
Then Western Sydney Wanderers joined the A-League and of course, as a Westie born-and-bred, I fell for their blue-collar, red-and-black charm.
They played mainly at night during the summer months, which meant making excuses for not being there for day-night cricket and T20s, but, the age-old alibi of “Well, Test cricket is the real thing anyway,” didn’t attract too much suspicion.
All along I kept telling myself everything was OK. I wasn’t short-changing anyone.
Well, I’ll admit I felt a bit guilty about basketball because we were once so close. But it wasn’t really my fault. The NBL left me without a team when the West Sydney Razorbacks went broke, and although I could’ve patched things up with the Sydney Kings, before long they were gone too and… well, I moved on.
When they recently turned up again on my doorstep, I just had to make excuses about being busy. It’s the truth. But I’m a woman under pressure these days. I was once so confident and in control but in the last few years it’s all started unravelling. I feel like so many of my sports want me to settle down with them and stop seeing the others.
Rugby league is talking about a summer Nines competition, the Sydney Autumn racing carnival is being beefed up after the start of the NRL season, and cricket just keeps up a constant stream of demands.
We spend a glorious summer together and then instead of a fond farewell, it’s like, “Well, what about South Africa? You can’t not watch us play the top ranked Test team in the world?”
True. So I did my best. But then it’s, “Hey, don’t forget the T20 series in South Africa and then, after that the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh.”
Good grief! I cheered the rain in Port Elizabeth last weekend like we were 300 hundred runs behind at Lord’s on the last day of an Ashes-deciding Test with one wicket in hand.
I had nothing left to give.
Up early on Saturday morning, after Friday night NRL, to adjust my Star Stable, I then tried (unsuccessfully) to reshape my English Premier League Fantasy team for an abbreviated round. Watched the Newmarket, Chipping Norton, Australian Cup and the Blamey Stakes while flicking in between to Penrith versus Newcastle in the NRL and then Newcastle Jets and Melbourne Heart in the A-League.
All day I put off making the call about what I’d watch that night – the Sydney derby in the A-League, or one of my favourite rivalries in the NRL, Manly and Melbourne. To make it even more difficult, I also have a serious addiction to House of Cards and there was a new episode of that screening too, but I realise that’s probably not going to earn me sympathy on a sports website.
Work commitments pulled me in both directions. I was hosting the first Sunday of ABC Grandstand’s NRL show The Hit Up the next day, but I also call the Wanderers home games for Grandstand. I ended up watching the A-League, recording the NRL and watching it the next morning before work.
But my best intentions of just napping between the end of the A-League and the start of the FA Cup quarterfinal between Arsenal and Everton went badly astray. I slept through the Gunners’ victory and felt totally ashamed of myself the next morning.
It’s complicated.
Surely I’m not the only one feeling slightly resentful of the conflict my various sporting passions are causing me to feel? I’m sick of checking and re-checking the the Fox Sports program guide, strategising my IQ settings and trying to figure out how I can be the woman who has it all (including sleep).
To make the conflict more irritating, if I watch one sporting event and record another, I have to put myself into social media isolation (yes, standby for another tragic admission) and that nearly kills me because I’ve come to regard Twitter as the ideal sports-watching companion.
So, my darling sports, give me some space. I love you all, but I can’t be there for all of you all the time.
Maybe relationships with people who play the field aren’t ideal, but don’t be too quick to dismiss us. We are valuable, and I like to think there are still quite a few of us around.
Debbie Spillane joins The Roar today as a regular columnist. She is a trailblazer in Australian sports journalism: the first full-time female broadcaster hired by ABC Sport, and the first woman to call cricket on ABC radio, among other achievements. She hosts Grandstand’s NRL show The Hit Up, all-female sports talk program Hens FC, and calls Wanderers games in the A-League.
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