TV Eye: Surviving a sporting nation

Prime's <i>The Crowd Goes Wild</i> hosts Andrew Mulligan and Hayley Holt - sport with a sense of humour. Photo / Supplied

I should have done it years ago. Instead, I did it on Monday. I rang Sky to cancel its sports package.

Now I have nothing against Sky or Sky Sport. But I think, in fact I'm sure, that I have something against sport. It bores me. It bores me to the extent that, rather than watch it, I'd prefer to poke pins in my eyes while listening to Susan Boyle, while wearing very tight speedos, while toasting my toes on a barbecue set to high, while waiting in line for hours at the Post Office to pay the damn Government and the damn ACC a car-load of money to register the car I almost never drive.

I didn't actually mention any of this pins-Boyle-speedos-toasting-queuing stuff to the polite young woman at Sky when I rang to cancel. She seemed a bit busy - it took me more than a half an hour to get through to customer services. Mondays are always hectic at Sky's customer services apparently - which, I imagine, is the reason she didn't ask why it was, that from that day forward, I would be Sky Sport-less and Sky would be short exactly $18.16 from me each month.

Mind you, it probably happens all the time, people cancelling this package or that channel. And you can do that only by talking to a polite young woman on the phone. Sky's website allows the adding of services but seems to have no place from which you can subtract them. How very curious.

Anyway, as you've noticed, I have digressed. Sport. That was what I was banging on about. Bloody, bloody sport.

I might blame the Black Caps for this loathing. I might blame the tedious tennis, or the God-awful golf or the 27 months of rugby broadcast each year. I might even blame Sky Sport's rugby commentary team for being annoying/full of it/not knowing what they're talking about. Everybody else seems to.

But really it has nothing to do with how rubbish New Zealand's cricket team is or any of the rest of it. It's down to me.

Sport bores me because I was never much good at it, have only a basic understanding of the rules of the most commonly loved games, and can't be bothered remembering much more about it than that the All Blacks haven't won a World Cup since, if memory serves, 1887.

So, you might be thinking, why have you been paying for Sky Sport for the last 10 years? Well. Hmm. If I'm being honest with you, and I think I am, it was so that I might be able to participate, at least in a superficial way, in the endless conversations we New Zealand males have about sport. Having Sky Sport and watching the occasional game of this and that, has allowed me, over the years, to bluff my way through no end of conversations about how flash our backline was or how rubbish our bowling attack is. I'm sure no one was convinced by any it, but at least I appeared to be making the effort.

Was this fertiliser for my conversational BS worth $18.16 a month? Well no, no it wasn't. So I've cancelled. Finally. Fortunately on the very day I terminated Sky Sport, Sky delivered me more fertiliser.

The Crowd Goes Wild, which, until now, has appeared late in the evening on Sky's free-to-air channel Prime, is now at the Dixon-friendly hour of 6.30 every weekday evening.

Of course I've seen bits of this sports wrap-up show now and then but, because I had Sky Sport, I've never felt the need to watch the whole thing through. From now on - at least now-and-then from now on - I'll be watching it.

Hosts Andrew Mulligan and Hayley Holt might be wearing silly blazers. They might even - though I doubt it - know as little as me. But it was all there on Monday night: cricket, tennis, rugby, football, weird snow sports and a pigeon being hit by a cricket ball. And they treat sport as it should be treated: as something that is not to be taken seriously, well at least not too seriously.

"Cricket is weird!" yelled Hayley. "Classic!" yelled Andrew. And then they worried about something called "squad depth" in New Zealand's Super 15 sides.

Yes, I thought, plenty of fertiliser here. And free of charge.

-TimeOut