'one notch in the belt we never got'

I’ve spent two weeks looking for the end of this story. I’ve been searching for that final paragraph that sums everything up perfectly. That perfect line or analogy to summarise the mess that was this story. In the end it was nothing I could of written, but an action, one nation stopping, heart palpitating, snooze inducing action. First however, the story itself.

The story had evolved from dot point formant two weeks ago, through to play by play of each day last week before ending up being a long winded, slow moving explanation of something that was quite simple to explain. What I was looking to do was to capture what two weeks and three weekends without TV or home internet would be like for a sports fan. Circumstances had conspired against me, forcing me to endure trial how far mobile sporting technology has come and how long I could survive without it.

Beginning Saturday 23^rd March through to Thursday 11^th April I was plasma-less and Optus-less. From Black Caviar winning her 24^th race during half time of the AFL season opener until last Thursday, the only sport I watched was on my iPhone. Any match summaries, results or box scores were on the phone. If there was breaking news, Twitter had it on my phone. If there was a try/goal/mark I needed to see Foxsports and espn.com were there on my phone. If the Miami Heat or Pittsburgh Penguins reeled off 27 or 15 game winning streaks my NBA/NHL apps were there. If the Grand Prix was on, the F1 app was running. The list keeps going with golf, cycling, baseball, union, cricket, you get the picture.

By the time I got to the 11^th of April I had missed 18 AFL games, 24 NRL games, a grand prix (Webber controversy), the Golden Slipper, hundreds of games of NBA/NHL/MLB and my two teams, the Dockers and Storm start the season a collective 7-0. March Madness, the 68 team college basketball tournament used to find the best team had started and finished.

During this time I listened to more ABC Grandstand footy since Saturday morning sport as a kid with Dad (Good to see the commentary team has changed. Drew, Stan, Mark and Gerard keep up the good work). I expanded my sporting podcast library and spent Thursday/Friday lunch at work doing fantasy football on a colleague’s iPad.

For three long weeks I talked to friends and colleagues about sport knowing only too well they had watched it and I hadn’t. I talked Vettel/Webber like I was at the race. I got up Collingwood fans when they lost (actually nothing wrong with that). I gloated about the Storm’s win over the Bulldog’s to my coffee shop owner. Not once did I mention to any of these people that I hadn’t seen any of it. Why would I with instant analysis from multiple media sources making me look like an expert? Who needs to watch it when we can have ‘experts’ telling us either how it happened or their opinion what they thought happened?

Expand that idea to Twitter and you can have thousands of ‘experts’ telling you what they think was going through Vettel’s mind, or that James Hird is bringing the game into disrepute, or that the best thing about the Masters is Caroline Wozniacki, Pauline Gretzky and Lindsey Vonn caddying for McIlroy, Johnson and Woods.

So what forced my hand? What got me to the point where enough was enough? It was a weekend of Fremantle v Essendon on Friday Night Football, it was Black Caviar gunning for Kingston Town’s record, it was Hawks and Pies at the G and it was Augusta and the Masters.

Oh the Masters. The place where once a year we watch montages of magnolias, bridges and creeks to awful ‘golf’ music (my wife’s description) and where a $1.44M first prize comes second to a Green Jacket.

As Snedeker stumbled and Day bogeyed, as Tiger stalked and a 14 year old stunned, as we learnt the word for fly in Spanish and watched the best cart golf you have ever seen, I realised that this is why we have TV’s. That no matter how much we tweet, how much we analyse or how much we talk about it, nothing beats these moments. From Jim Ferrier coming second after being up 3 with 6 to play in 1950 to Greg Norman being Mized in 1987, this was the moment. As Bertrand and Australia II did in 1983 and Cadel again in 2011, today Adam Scott, the man with the swing as good as his looks, gave Australian sport the thing it was missing, the ‘one notch in the belt we never got’.

Nothing can beat that feeling, of watching something live, of watching history being created. We watch because we want to witness greatness. We want to tell our children, our grandchildren, that we were saw Aloisi make that penalty, Waugh drive the last ball of the day for four, Johnny Wilkinson drop kicked our hearts and Cathy stride to that ‘special’ victory. It is these Adam Scott in the pouring rain at Augusta National sinking a curling right to left putt on the second playoff hole that makes us appreciate not only our sports people, but how television brings that all into our homes and our lives.