I never watch football. Even in my years as a sports reporter I never fully gravitated towards the World Game.
But once a few ducks wearing Mexico jerseys and a hoard of South Korean fans dunking their heads into buckets of tequila started appearing across my feed, I immediately caught whiff of the famous Cup Fever.
The entire world is watching this one, and I’ve happily become one of the casual bandwagoners jumping on-board for the Socceroos.
I set an alarm earlier this week just to make sure I wouldn’t forget, double-checked I had updated the SBS on Demand app, even made loose plans with mates to go and watch a public screening in Sydney.
I imagine I’m like thousands of other Aussies who couldn’t really give a hoot normally, but are drawn to the undeniable allure of victimless, alcohol-assisted tribalism.
The rain kept the casuals away. So I, like millions of others across our nation notoriously lacking in buffer speed, parked up at home and hoped for the best.
Not even a prayer to the great Maradona could have saved us.
The first 25 minutes went fine, and I was being lured into a warm and buttery sense of false security.
Then winger Nestory Irankunda snapped up the ball and made his way towards the goal. After almost half an hour of Australia looking a bit run down by the Turkish, the vibe was electric.
But I kid you not, the stream buffered the very second before Irankunda struck the ball into the goal.
It was the moment you wait four years for, blunted once again by shoddy internet and what I suspect to be poor pre-planning for an event everyone knows has unprecedented demands on bandwidth.
Instead of becoming an overnight convert, I was sitting there watching my open-jawed reflection stare back at me, maniacally laughing in irony at the black screen.
A black screen suffering with a 500mb/s “fast internet” plan behind it.
The hopeful yellow buffer icon kept circling, but once it figured itself out, Irankunda was already boxing the corner flag.
Even in the middle of the country’s biggest city, we can’t figure it out.
We clearly haven’t learned from the 2018 fiasco when Optus was forced to address the national outrage that came from similar nightmares.
I really tried to put it past me but the buffering problems only got worse the more the game went on.
“Do I care enough to persist?” I asked myself, as I imagine thousands of others like me are today.
The irony is that I remember having a more seamless experience watching the World Cup 20 years ago on a beaten up old CRT TV from my bedroom in rural NSW.
Someone let me know how the second half goes.