As you may have heard, the Rugby World Cup final is on this weekend and, better yet, it features Australia and New Zealand, old foes who, for all their respective success, have never faced each other in a World Cup decider. The ice-down-the-trousers kicker to this stirring news, however, is that the game is on at Twickenham in London and kicks off at 4pm, Saturday, local time. That translates to a Sunday 3am kick-off for those Australians in Sydney and Melbourne, and 5am in New Zealand. Could there be a worse time than 3am, a time even its own mother struggles to love? 3am! It’s neither here nor there. Tough to stay up for, and just as tough to get up for. It couldn’t be worse. So how do those of us interested in the game get around it?
The usuals
OK, this isn’t brain surgery, folks. If you want to stay up for the game drink coffee, leave the lights on, perform a set of burpees every now and then. Whatever works for you. In short, don’t have a hot bath and a hot toddy a few hours before kick-off then lie on the couch in your jim-jams under the doona in the dark but for the dry-lightning flicker of the TV and expect to be conscious by 3am. That’d just be stupid.
More extreme
In the event you can’t get hold of some Clockwork Orange-style lidlocks (check in Aldi) toothpicks may suffice. In a similar vein you could give yourself a full body rubdown with liniment at about midnight. You’ll be throbbing like a fully-stoked boiler on a steam ship and sleep will be impossible. Better yet the smell will create an olfactory link to the players and the game. You’ll be experiencing a crude version of smellavision, if you will.
If physical discomfort is not your thing you may also like to consider the things that normally prevent you from sleeping: worries about your job, health, love life, or some of the questionable choices you’ve made in your time; choices that may well have led to you, just for instance, having to write 1,000 words about how to stay awake for a rugby game in the middle of the night. So mull these things over in your mind, focus on them obsessively. The danger of this method, however, is that you may not be able to so easily switch your brain off when the time comes for kick-off. Indeed, you may be in such a funk you’ll barely care what happens.
Squeeze in a snooze beforehand
Getting a few hours sleep in the bank before the game is a solid option and it should mean you’re less likely to unwittingly nod off during the game. I recall once, in my share house days, staying up for the 1990 Fifa World Cup final between West Germany and Argentina. By the time the game started at 3am I was nodding off and and I more or less missed the whole thing, though I snapped to often enough and randomly shouted “offside!” to give the impression I wasn’t a flake.
This is all to say that, yes, a few hours sleep beforehand makes sense. Just make sure you’ve got a failsafe alarm or an adult responsible enough to wake you on time, and the good sense to ignore your semi-conscious babble about not wanting to watch the game after all. This is just your body betraying your mind (or is it the other way around?) and your designated waker needs to realise this. Instruct them beforehand to physically drag you out of bed if it comes to it. Draw up some kind of contract.
Watch it in the morning
Why bother staying or getting up, right? Going to bed with plans to watch a recording of the game in the morning will not alter the result. Unless, of course, your going to bed will be like the flapping of butterfly wings in the Amazon, that infinitesimal disturbance of air that sets off a chain reaction that ends up in Israel Folau tripping over short of the line with the game in the balance? Possible? Who can say for sure. Stephen Hawking, maybe. But what I know from experience is that watching the game after the fact is not as satisfying as watching it live.
Besides the fact that watching live creates the welcome delusion that you are putting in the hard yards, doing your small bit for team and country, watching the next morning creates problems. The result is out there, calling to you like an unopened love letter. If the game is dull, or you have a lunch to get to, you’ll be inclined to fast forward to the good bits. If the game is tight you’ll be tempted to end your anxiety by retrieving the result. Yes, you’ll save yourself some time and worry but but you’ll rob yourself of the game’s narrative. It’s like flicking to the last past of a murder mystery when the body is still warm. So watching in the morning is an option but a risky one.
Choose wisely, good folk.
