I never watch football. Even in my years as a sports reporter I never fully gravitated towards the World Game. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The entire world is watching this one, and I\u2019ve happily become one of the casual bandwagoners jumping on-board for the Socceroos. <\/p>\n
I set an alarm earlier this week just to make sure I wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
I imagine I\u2019m like thousands of other Aussies who couldn\u2019t really give a hoot normally, but are drawn to the undeniable allure of victimless, alcohol-assisted tribalism. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Not even a prayer to the great Maradona could have saved us. <\/p>\n
The first 25 minutes went fine, and I was being lured into a warm and buttery sense of false security. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
But I kid you not, the stream buffered the very second before Irankunda struck the ball into the goal. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
A black screen suffering with a 500mb\/s \u201cfast internet\u201d plan behind it.<\/p>\n
The hopeful yellow buffer icon kept circling, but once it figured itself out, Irankunda was already boxing the corner flag. <\/p>\n
Even in the middle of the country\u2019s biggest city, we can\u2019t figure it out. <\/p>\n
We clearly haven\u2019t learned from the 2018 fiasco when Optus was forced to address the national outrage that came from similar nightmares.<\/p>\n
I really tried to put it past me but the buffering problems only got worse the more the game went on. <\/p>\n
\u201cDo I care enough to persist?\u201d I asked myself, as I imagine thousands of others like me are today. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Someone let me know how the second half goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I never watch football. Even in my years as a sports reporter I never fully gravitated towards the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[2095,64,63,689,355695,355699,355704,2791,355693,355696,596,355702,2184,673,2041,677,355697,355694,355698,355703,85,256625,670,355700,355701],"class_list":["post-735880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-america","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-buffer-speed","tag-buffering-problems","tag-buttery-sense","tag-central-america","tag-corner-flag","tag-ducks-wearing","tag-football","tag-hopeful-yellow","tag-mexico","tag-new-south-wales","tag-north-america","tag-oceania","tag-open-jawed-reflection-stare","tag-public-screening","tag-seamless-experience","tag-shoddy-internet","tag-sports","tag-sports-reporter","tag-sydney","tag-unprecedented-demands","tag-utter-mess"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}