The heart of the Australian winter is the premier period for rugging up on the couch and watching overseas sport through bleary eyes, wilfully ruining your night’s sleep in the quest to be privy to something special.
On our screens has been Wimbledon, The Open Championship, the Tour de France, overseas cricket — and that’s just the past week or so.
Those early hours, where all you have for company is the other devotees on social media tweeting out into the ether and the inquisitive looks from a curious pet through the window, are an intrinsic part of being a sports fan.
Of course, you could sleep through the night and watch the highlights in the morning, but it’s not the same.
To experience history unfolding in front of you, to have the adrenaline build throughout a match or a tournament as it fights off the tendrils of sleep trying to drag you back to bed — and to see others doing the same — is a large part of the process of following sport.
I used to have to go as far as to set an alarm for the middle of the night to make sure that I didn’t miss a moment.
But since having kids, that necessity has gone out of the window.
I like to think of it as a positive that my children seem to know the global sporting schedule, often zigging when their usual sleep pattern would be zagging in order to have me up for the biggest moments across the world.
Monday was a prime example.
Aussie Cameron Smith had slipped slightly in Sunday morning’s third round, cooling my immediate need to stay up until he teed off for the final 18 holes of the Open.
But one-year-old Bonnie could feel in her bones what was about to unfold on the back nine.
Up at 1am, she settled in my arms while I watched on my phone as Smith moved cautiously through the early stages of his history-making effort.
She took just long enough though for the mulleted magician to make the turn — and the first of five birdies in a row — and entice me on to the couch to see how the finish unfolded.
If she had settled five minutes earlier, I might have missed the whole thing. Five minutes later and I would have been in danger of waking her up in celebration.
But no, she timed it just perfectly — almost as if she had set an alarm.
Tyler Maher is the sleep-challenged editor of the News
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