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KEY POINTS:
I would like to think that as one of the country's best sports journalists, I have matured with age, very much like a fine wine. But that fine wine rapidly turns into a heavily shaken bottle of Marque Vue bought on Trade Me when trying to cover the Wellington Sevens.
Unlike any of the events that Auckland is yet to have, the Wellington Sevens are basically an all-bets-are-off occasion. Rather than covering the event, you tend to get sucked into it, very much like a testicle can if you sit too long in the bath once you have pulled the plug out.
From a professional perspective, the Sevens is a great occasion to bump into old broadcasting adversaries and friends, talk about the advances in digital technology and make love to attractive promo girls.
Having said that, things have clearly changed since I have been happily married with children.
But that doesn't mean they don't think about it. The promo girls, I mean.
This year I was taking it fairly easy. I was doing some filming, trying to tell "people stories" which will be broadcast to the masses via the Speights beer website on the internet.
It seems like only yesterday that I attended my first Sevens tournament, back at the start of this amazing decade. Back then I was employed by a regular network to take care of the all-important stadium interviews for live TV coverage.
That I am now doing it for the internet goes to show how far technology has advanced over the past 10 years. It also goes to show how my broadcasting career hasn't.
I can pinpoint the exact moment my in-house sports broadcasting career at TVNZ came to a crossroads attended by the serious crash unit. It was after day one of the 2002 Wellington Sevens, when I was reprimanded by the then head of TVNZ sports for a live TV cross during which I was filmed sculling two litres of beer from the bowels of a rubber chicken.
In my defence I explained that I was merely trying to capture the atmosphere of the event and that I had succumbed to peer pressure after being called a "pussy" by certain drunken members of the grandstand.
My phone stopped ringing that day, and the head of sport programming stopped returning my calls and my faxes. Actually he did return my faxes but not my calls.
Nowadays I see people like David Di Somma, Andrew Saville, and Howard Dobson doing the job that I was destined to have. To be honest, it saddens me.
I am saddened because I blew it, because I was too immature to take the role seriously, and because I wasn't content to ask the same inane questions again and again and again.
But once again in my defence, I asked the questions people wanted to know the answers to. When all the other sports journos stood back and were satisfied with the answer to such inane questions as "A big game this weekend?" I dared to go further, asking then All Black captain Reuben Thorne what the procedure was should somebody from the starting line-up need to do poos during the aforementioned "Big Game".
Not surprisingly, Reuben was visibly relieved to be asked such a refreshing question, and to this day I am told he has yet to be asked another that can match it.
Why? Well I will tell you why. Because these were the questions that the public wanted to know the answers to. I was the people's sportscaster, telling it how it is. Who is there to do that for them now?
That is a rhetorical question so I don't expect you to answer it but I think you get my drift, rhetorically.
For the record I have attended three Rugby World Cups and three Olympic Games as a sportscaster, and it has to be said that my most recent coverage of the Beijing Olympics hosted from Los Angeles is probably the best Olympics footage this country has ever seen.
But did I get a mention at the recent Halberg Awards? That is another rhetorical question. The fact of the matter is I didn't even get an invitation.
I have since learned that the incident back at the 1999 rugby awards when I unintentionally urinated over a margarine sculpture resulted in my being blacklisted from many of the larger corporate sporting occasions, certainly the ones where margarine or butter sculptures were a feature.
Again in my defence, I would argue that that was a long time ago and that I had acted completely out of character after accidentally spiking my own drink. I was trying to spike Eric Rush's drink but it would appear that on this occasion he had the last laugh.
He has since gone on to MC many major events while I am still doing the odd kid's party and movie premieres for B-grade porn.
As I recall, immediately after the event, the powers that be colluded, resulting in my MC licence being revoked.
In very real terms this meant I couldn't officially MC a major sporting event in New Zealand for more than eight years. I was banned from MCing longer than Muhammad Ali was banned from boxing.
Anyway, this is going on a bit; I am off to day two of the Sevens, but thanks for listening.
