By
Ross Stapleton

For
TV sports fans, tonight’s State of Origin
is merely an early night pipe opener for the battle ahead. Countless hours of
premium sports viewing over the next two and a half months will see a fundamental
shift from the loungeroom to the bedroom as some of Australia’s finest perform on the
world stage that bleeds from late night TV into all hours of the morning.

Every
four years, dedicated cricket fans step up to the crease for a tough home
campaign of sleep deprivation as they time shift to the UK, that will require
for many the widespread use of such sports performance enhancing viewing
supplements as eye drops and the usual suspects that runs the gamut from No
Doze to…well you get the picture!

But
before the One-Day-Internationals (ODI) blast off our Ashes summer schedule
with a double bunger weekend against Bangladesh on Saturday and England Sunday,
we have Royal Ascot’s second day tonight on Sky Racing that started off on the
right fetlock for Australia earlier this morning, before we get down to the
serious business of the Socceroos helping host Germany kick off the
Confederations Cup on SBS from 4.30 tomorrow morning. It appears our
main strike weapon Mark Viduka, will be forced to sit out the game as he
continues to battle to overcome a chronic hamstring injury.

Other major sports on the immediate TV horizon
includes the year’s second golf major the US Open starting on Friday morning on
Nine from 6am, and Wimbledon serves up its opening day next Monday night, and
the Tour de France can’t come soon enough for some of us in early July.
Earlier today yet another Aussie, Robbie McEwen. won the latest stage of
the Tour of Switzerland, while it’s also enormously encouraging to see two
Aussies in second and third place overall in the Tour standings behind German
legend Jan Ullrich, who will again be the main threat to Lance Armstrong in this
year’s Tour de France. You can read about the rampant Aussie riders here.

The full story is on the site here.