Live sport remains so relentless, and yet so addictive
The Premier League’s return will offer yet more TV gold for us to get our teeth into, writes Alistair Tweedale
The chance of something very special happening is the most exciting thing on the planet
Asummer without a men’s international football tournament should be a chance to recharge the batteries, put your feet up and switch off from the world of sport.
If you are lucky enough to be, say, Harry Kane, who has just had his first full summer off in five years, you will naturally be fit, ready and raring to go for the new season. You will probably even be looking forward to it.
But for us poor spectators, those of us sucked in by everything the sporting world throws at us, there has been no let-up.
I am not trying to claim that lifting my phone to order a takeaway while simultaneously watching the Tour de France, Wimbledon, cricket and netball World Cups and the British Grand Prix before I have bothered to get properly dressed (this may or may not have happened) is more taxing than the sort of summer Kane is forced to endure
year on year, but I am saying you can have too much of a good thing.
The schedule these days is relentless and, as someone who finds it impossible to ignore the lure of live sport on the telly, fatigue can kick in.
There were only six days between the Champions League final and the start of the Women’s World Cup. Just 17 days separated Ben Stokes’s heroics in the Cricket World Cup final and the start of the Ashes – which has impacted on an injury-ravaged and ostensibly physically and emotionally exhausted England team. They are tired and, in some sense, so am I.
It is slightly odd to be feeling this way in the week that the Premier League returns, but maybe it is the overlap between sports that makes the calendar feel so packed. Nor does it fill this particular fan with a thirst for more when England are on the wrong end of an Ashes spanking. It really does feel like a good time for a break.
There will, of course, be no rest. The Premier League will be back with bells on this Friday night, the Ashes will continue next week with Australia in the driving seat and there will be golf, rugby, athletics, tennis, basketball, darts, Gaelic football, tiddlywinks
– you name it – on our screens at every waking (and sleeping) hour of the day. We are well past the point of oversaturation.
A colleague has spoken to me about trading sports off against one another – fully immersing yourself in fewer to maintain full interest in those rather than spreading yourself thinly.
Over the next month or so, it would be lovely to focus solely on football’s Premier League and Women’s Super League, but then what about the US Open, England’s Rugby World Cup warm-up games or the Vuelta a Espana?
And that is the reason we all keep coming back for more. Every time you try to have what someone in their right mind might call a normal weekend, some sport you really thought you could ignore drags you back in.
It is the joy of being a sports fan. Any particular team can let you down horribly. Any single match can be a damp squib or a waste of time. But the possibility of something special happening is the most exciting thing on the planet.
That is why, come this weekend, I will be settling down on the sofa for the Premier League’s return, as ready and raring to go as Harry Kane.