How I Missed The Greatest Comeback in 125 Years

Life sometimes gets in the way of football.

Juggling three kids, a full-time job and all of the boring aspects of life (getting a haircut, picking up or dropping off drycleaning, getting an oil change, etc), you may find yourself in a similar predicament to me where midweek matches become quite a chore.

If only life was easier where I could support one club and put my foot down and insist on watching them and only them. “Ey by gum lad, I’ll only watch Middlesbrough on me telly.” Not true, but if you did support Boro, you’d only see them on television maybe once or twice a month (and that would be a good month).

Instead, we had last night’s Spurs versus Aston Villa match on Setanta. Here in the States, I got home last night and rubbed my hands with glee at the prospect of watching Spurs (well, not really, but I was excited about watching the match).

Then I realized something. Something terrible. The Monday matches are now on Setanta instead of Fox.

Gutted, because I have Setanta but only on ITVN and no way of taping it (at least, not legally), I felt the sick feeling at the bottom of my stomach that I had missed the match. I decided to tune into Setanta at around 8pm ET with the hope of seeing it re-aired. Instead all I saw was 45 minutes of mind-numbing interviews with Irish rugby players after their defeat against Argentina.

So I decided instead to suck it up and watch the highlights from the news segment of the taped Through The Night from Sky via Fox. Disappointed enough knowing that I missed the match, I was almost despondent when I heard the Sky presenters, at the top of the news program, mention how Spurs had their biggest comeback in their 125 years of football.

Still, I held on with awaited breath to see footage and hear the stories from the big match of the day. As is often the case with Sky, the hype was bigger than the actual substance. No clips from the match and no interviews. What?! I then realized that Setanta had the coverage in the UK and Ireland and, as a result, Sky wouldn’t have the rights to the highlights or footage (at least not last night).

Bloody hell.

So where do you go when you don’t have highlights and you need an immediate fix? The Premier League website? No. FoxSoccer.com’s highlights? No. The club website? Pah! Are you kidding me? Of course, I made my journey over to 101greatgoals.com who provide faster turnaround of clips than even the broadcasters themselves can do (online, that is).

The realization about midweek matches is that they’re often more exciting than day matches on weekends. While I won’t be as far as saying that midweek matches should be “banned” for the sake of the working man (and being able to squeeze them in), I’m sensing that I — more than ever — need to move from ITVN to DirecTV or DISH.

When I do, murphy’s law will strike me. I can imagine myself getting home for a football match on a Monday after work and having all of my errands completed. Sitting in front of the television, I pull up the Monday night football match taped earlier on my DVR. I sit back and watch what will undoubtedly be one of the most boring nil-nil draws known to mankind. Ahh, football sometimes gets in the way of life.