Introductions all round

Right then, let's get something out of the way up front (no jokes about that choice of phrase, please)... drum roll... cymbal clash... I'm a girl.

BUT - and it's a big but (again, no jokes please) - I'm not the kind of girl who campaigns for women's rights in sport and all that; I'm not even the kind of girl who plays sport herself (zero hand-eye co-ordination when I was a schoolgirl kind of put paid to any aspirations I might have had of making the SA Women's Cricket Team - the 16th Netball Team would have been a good start in my humble and clumsy teenage opinion). But most important of all, I'm not the kind of girl who watches sport just because Mark Boucher has a nice bum. I realise that there are plenty of women like that (your wife might even be one), but there are actually a few of us who enjoy THE GAME itself. Very few, admittedly.

Now of course, I am a woman, and so I will make female-type observations from time to time. When I do, before you criticise me for being a girly-girl who's just interested in how hot the Springboks look in their new strip (they do, for what it's worth), best you bear in mind that many men watch tennis solely for the moments when Maria Sharapova bends down to pick up a ball. Let he who is without lust cast the first stone.

One more thing: I love sport, but I by no means claim to be an expert on it. I understand the off-side rule in football, I know what a yorker is, and I know how many points a converted try is worth (you'd be surprised at how many women don't - your wife might even be one); but I don't understand the finer points of scrumming, I don't know all the field placings in cricket off by heart, and I still have no idea what the difference is between a loose-head prop and a tight-head prop (although it makes for interesting pictures in my mind). Feel free to educate me.