Field Theory by Hadyn Green

I totally agree with that sentiment about getting up in the middle of the night to watch sport, specially as a kid.

My first memory of middle of the night sport is the 1980 All black tour of Wales - sitting nervously wondering if the All Blacks could breach the scarlet line of Llanelli, and puzzling over the sloping ground at Stradey Park.

The FA Cup was certainly part of that, but I've got to admit that there are very few memories of actually good games. So often the two teams that make it seem to either be one strong one and one weak one and it ends 2-0 (eg. Chelsea/middlesbrough, Man U/Millwall) or else two strong teams who stalemate each other out of fear (Man u/chelsea). About once every 5 or 7 years you get a classic eg. the recent liverpool/west ham final for instance - pity about the result really. The memories are as much about the bright spring sunshine and gingham grass and how it contrasts with the cold and howling wind outside in NZ at that time of year.

And for whatever reason, the FA Cup has simply declined in stature, and with so much other football on between the English prem, Italian Serie A, Spanish La Liga, plus sundry other stuff like the Phoenix, there just isn't the demand to see a game in the middle of the night which could well be quite dull. I can see why no channel has picked the rights up.

this year it is chelsea/portsmouth which could end in a fairytale for portsmouth, but then with the way they have run their finances and are not paying people like the st john's ambulance i'm not sure I want them to have one last hurrah before they slip into the financial morass.

It would seem wrong to get the kids up to watch a laptop

How about a desktop with a 24" LCD monitor?

I imagine many of you have similar memories. Maybe not of football, but of getting up or being gently woken by parents, to sleepily walk downstairs and see something happening live on the far side of the globe.

My memories are of going to the ABs/Lions games at Athletic Park then trekking back home across McAllister Park and getting back in time to see the second half kick off and watching the BLACKCAPS play on TV1/TV3.

When it comes to football though it's another story. A number of people may not realise that I was dead set on football, more so than I am with rugby now, until I was 18. My mum met her football-mad partner when I was 8, he was a Notts Forrest supporter so his best mate saw fit to save me from that and bought me a Man U strip. From then until I was 14 I had every Man U strip, homes, alternates, aways, one-offs, in varying levels of authenticity. My birthday cake for my 10th birthday was banana in the shape of a shirt with red icing and a devil's logo.

This is where my early morning memories come from, and talking shit to the Chelsea fans at the pub when I was a kid, egged on by Dave and me stepda.

My earliest sporting memory where I got that 'oh wow' feeling you get when your team wins that huge match was when we went to the Bull and Bear to watch the Champions League game where Man U got the treble. That was a fantastic match and as an 11 year old kid I was kakking myself. Especially when it was 0-1 and the game was almost up. It goes a long way to explaining my ongoing hero-worship for Ole Gunnar Solskjær though.

It would seem wrong to get the kids up to watch a laptop

Surely the advantage of our modern world is that you can get up at 7am, ignore the outside world for about two hours, and watch it delayed having recorded it off the internet (or whatever).

How many people are going to get the result spoiled at 5am while they are asleep, after all?

Here's video of the game if you think it'll be better than Wiki

First FA Cup final I can remember is the Sunderland-Leeds final in 1973, and that great underdog victory got me hooked on the FA Cup forever. Improbable sideburns, a great stripey kit, and a victory over Leeds - what more could a game want?

Surely the advantage of our modern world is that you can get up at 7am, ignore the outside world for about two hours, and watch it delayed having recorded it off the internet (or whatever).

Maybe there is something nice about inconvenience.

With this new season of Lost my partner and I have declined downloading the latest episode and are watching it the "old" way. It's an interesting experience, having to be somewhere with a TV at a certain time on a certain day.

Surely the advantage of our modern world is that you can get up at 7am, ignore the outside world for about two hours, and watch it delayed having recorded it off the internet (or whatever).

Well yes, there is that of course, and often that's the best tactic specially when you have things to do (like work) the next day. But given that a lot of english and european football is timed for their evenings anyway, it often isn't necessary, as I can get up at the very civilized time of 6.30 and fix toast and coffee and be ready for a 6.45am kickoff. dress and get the kid's school lunch ready at halftime, jump on the bicycle and down the hill to work at full time. only a problem when it goes to extra time and pens....which fortunately last year's champs league final did not, what with barcelona all over united (yay yay and yay again). ABU.

the other problem with recording things is it is just too tempting to fast forward. sitting there bleary eyed at about 3am watching Contador wait and wait and wait to attack PhArmstrong and then eventually wipe the floor him in last year's tdf wouldn't have been half so exciting if i'd just fastforwarded through to where the action began in the last 3 kms.

With this new season of Lost my partner and I have declined downloading the latest episode and are watching it the "old" way. It's an interesting experience, having to be somewhere with a TV at a certain time on a certain day.

That IS old skool! Is there a particular type of advertiser who buys slots during Lost Hadyn? Not the flight centre I'd imagine, given the premise.

I can't believe you like the Champions League format? I prefer it the old way - champions (only) from each country play home & away knockout tournament? Brilliant format, no dead rubber league system (there's 2 of them now) like now when the only interesting stuff happens in the quarter finals, by which time any potential giant killer has been wiped out

While the FA Cup's importance has declined alongside Champions League, etc, it's still a great gathering of the Football clans here for those who've gone out instead of taking the blanket / milo route. I wore my Spurs shirt to the Paddington to watch Liverpool / Chelsea a couple of years ago, and had great banter all night with the Chelsea muppets. In a year with no World Cup, it's nice to talk Football (I realise lack of talking football isn't a problem in Wellington :P).

My fav 'staying up for the FA Cup' memory is me and me best mate, aged 8, staying up for Brighton / Man Utd, and watching 'The Omen' which was handily scheduled beforehand. Staying awake wasn't really a problem for that one.

With this new season of Lost my partner and I have declined downloading the latest episode and are watching it the "old" way. It's an interesting experience, having to be somewhere with a TV at a certain time on a certain day.

I really enjoy doing this with some programmes - it gives you something to look forward to, and some structure to the day. I'm actually way more likely to keep up with stuff I'm watching on TV than something I can watch any time, because if I can do it any time I never get round to it; if it's on at a particular time, I have to remember it.

(As for the noise-at-3am issue - my mum made my dad buy headphones with an extra-long-cord, to solve this very problem. Which only works if you're watching alone.)

gotten up

I think that's what you do for the Superbowl. Never for an FA Cup.

With this new season of Lost my partner and I have declined downloading the latest episode and are watching it the "old" way. It's an interesting experience, having to be somewhere with a TV at a certain time on a certain day.

Yeah, I've tried to do that with Lost for every season, and if I miss an ep because I forgot to set the DVD recorder that's my own bad luck, no downloading allowed. Surprisingly it's worked out well

I have fond memories of watching football. I used to watch the highlight package (probably match of the day or something) back in the late 80's. One of the first games I remember watching was the unbelievable Arsenal vs Liverpool of 1989 when Arsenal won the Championship on the last kick of the season.

I don't the champions league format, as long as Spurs make it this year. I seem to be cursed with supporting teams who almost make it, Spurs, Hurricanes, All Blacks...

I think with Lost you can miss 25 consecutive episodes and still tune in and work out that they have basically done SFA to resolve anything ;)

With this new season of Lost my partner and I have declined downloading the latest episode and are watching it the "old" way. It's an interesting experience, having to be somewhere with a TV at a certain time on a certain day.

We're not going quite that far -- we record on the MySky -- but watching rather than downloading programmes that screen in HD has its advantages. (And yes, I know about .mkv files, but the PS3 won't play them and they are bloody big.)

They not only look better -- they sound better, especially if you have a 5.1 audio set-up. I finally went to home theatre this year, because proper HDMI 1.2 AV receivers finally hit my price point, and it's quite a revelation.

My mum met her football-mad partner when I was 8, he was a Notts Forrest supporter so his best mate saw fit to save me from that and bought me a Man U strip. From then until I was 14 I had every Man U strip, homes, alternates, aways, one-offs, in varying levels of authenticity. My birthday cake for my 10th birthday was banana in the shape of a shirt with red icing and a devil's logo.

Meh, there's no such thing as a Man U (or a Chelsea) supporter because they're not proper teams, even people in Manchester and London think that.

Now, Notts Forest, that's a proper team.

Some of my fondest memories of my father are from being woken to watch the FA Cup final with him - a ritual beginning with Keegan and Toshack's Liverpool beating Newcastle 3-0 in the early 70's

Which incidentally, is why I support Liverpool - winners of the first big game I can remember watching.

But then, Dad was a sports tragic - I can recall him wiring the entire outside of the house so that he (being a good Boyo) could pick-up distant live radio coverage of the 5 Nations games featuring Wales during their 70's glory years of JPR Williams, Barry John etc.

So the passionate need to follow a big game live certainly predates TV coverage (as I'm sure any fans of Winston McCarthy could attest)

Meh, there's no such thing as a Man U (or a Chelsea) supporter because they're not proper teams, even people in Manchester and London think that.

Hey! I take umbrage at that. You leave my (adopted for extremely spurious reasons) team alone!

Some of my fondest memories of my father are from being woken to watch the FA Cup final with him - a ritual beginning with Keegan and Toshack's Liverpool beating Newcastle 3-0 in the early 70's

Same. We used to always go to a family friend's house and watch it with bacon and eggs. I remember it always being sunny at their house.

But then, Dad was a sports tragic - I can recall him wiring the entire outside of the house so that he (being a good Boyo) could pick-up distant live radio coverage of the 5 Nations games featuring Wales during their 70's glory years of JPR Williams, Barry John etc.

Again, same. My Dad and I share a birthday, and the thing he most remembers about my birth, is that he wasn't allowed to take the 'trannie' into the delivery room to listen to the cricket. I'm sure my Mum was delighted.

Of course, I can't talk, cos I just spent 10 minutes on Cricinfo, figuring out what game it would have been. I mean, if we were playing Australia....

Hey! I take umbrage at that. You leave my (adopted for extremely spurious reasons) team alone!

We can both still hate Man U though, right? :)