Sport is an integral part of my life. There hasn’t been a single, defining sporting event that has changed me and sport doesn’t define me – my role as a husband and father does that . But it has helped shape the person I am today, athough not physically – beer and chocolate take care of that.

Some of my earliest memories revolve around sport. I remember watching with my father as Jimmy Hill and Brian Moore presented The Big Match at Sunday lunchtime. I remember going with him to watch his beloved Stoke City live when I got a little older.

My bedroom walls bore witness to every game that my father ever went to see. He would bring home a rosette or flag or some other merchandising trinket that he would present to me as he described the day's excitement. To this day, sport remains one of the few topics about which we can truly communicate as equals.

In 1973, we moved to Australia and found our new home to be more focused on participation rather than just watching sport. As a result, I got to try out everything that this sport-mad nation had to offer – hockey, athletics, soccer, tennis, football (Aussie rules), cricket, netball, basketball – the list is endless. If anyone ever wonders why Australia is so successful at its sporting endeavours, the answer is right there; sport is tightly woven into the very fabric of society.

Not that I was particularly good at any of those sports, but the fact that I was able to participate in them all had a tremendous influence. This opportunity to get involved is often taken for granted in Australia, but it is a key factor in making us one of the world’s great nations.

Later, as I approached puberty, we were to move to a very small bush town, roughly half way between Adelaide and Perth. It was here that sport took on a completely new relevance. The one thing you really don’t need as a teenager is to be different, but as a pale, skinny, bookish pommy kid with a very broad northern English accent, I doubt that it was possible to have been any more different. Kids, in general, can be very cruel to outsiders; country kids have turned that cruelty into an art form.

Fortunately, however, I was blessed with reasonable ball skills and hand-eye co-ordination and so was able to make the local under-17 football team. Football gave me a way to fit in; it didn’t make them accept me as one of their own, but it helped me to stand out just a little less.

As time went by, I moved back to civilisation and found my niche. After a brief dalliance with alcohol and despite the constant, but unsuccessful, pursuit of the opposite sex, I eventually returned to the sports field as an outlet for my energies.

Soon, sport would consume all of my leisure time. The combination of football, cricket and netball had me playing or practising sport every day of the week. My circle of friends consisted solely of teammates from the various sports clubs I was involved in. It was a busy time, a fun time, but ultimately it wasn’t a way of life that could continue forever. Something had to change and, as luck would have it, sport played a part in the inevitable upheaval.

Not uncommonly, for an Australian, I met my wife through sport – in this case football. I should probably point out straight away that she didn’t actually play the game - she’s tough, but she’s not that dumb. Sharon was the friend of a team-mate’s wife and, in the age-old tradition of setting up conveniently single people, we were pushed together on a set-up date that she’s probably been regretting ever since.

Sharon, too, became caught in the web of sports that provided the structure for my life at the time. She suffered through many wasted weekends, put up with me during the increasingly frequent periods of injury and finally became the voice of reason when the time arrived for me to hang up my boots. She saw that my body was no longer capable of recovering from the broken bones, dislocated joints and muscle injuries that I was to suffer in service of amateur sport. My body had failed me and the legacy of those injuries still affects my every waking moment.

Now, with my sporting achievements fading into distant memories, my son is my new obsession. I very much want him to experience all of the joy that sport can deliver and, at three, he has already developed a strong arm and is pretty good with a cricket bat. I will try to instil in him a love for all sports and teach him the joy of competition and the nobility of sportsmanship. Quite a challenge.

As exciting as that challenge is, I can’t quite shake my need to be involved in sport in some way, and so I have taken up writing about the sports that I love. In the process, I have become the very thing that I despised as a teenager – a past-it old bastard who thinks he knows everything there is to know about everything. I write letters to the editor, listen to ABC radio (Australia’s BBC) and, at 42 years old, have become a thoroughly grumpy old man.

My participation in the physical side of sport is now restricted to an occasional social round of golf with a good mate. Golf, for me, is more about the camaraderie than the game, but the competitive streak is not completely dead. The quality of the golf may not be very high, but the seriousness of the competition should not be underestimated.

As much as I love golf, time pressures mean that I get to enjoy it very infrequently and so I have had to look for some other way to keep sport in my life. A few years ago, I started writing my thoughts down and inflicting them on a group of good and very tolerant friends. I had found my outlet and set about looking to find a way of reaching a wider audience. Writing for Sportingo offered that opportunity.

The digital age gives writers the ability to communicate and share ideas with people all over the globe. Surprisingly, not everyone agrees with what we write; unsurprisingly, they are not afraid to let us know about it. It is quite confronting, after spending hours developing and crafting the perfect piece, to have a reader refer to it as drivel or for them to dismiss everything you believe in as ill-informed, reactionary crap.

On reflection, however, even the harshest comments are positive. In an age of indifference, to have something you have written move someone else to react, to put forward a contrary view, or even just acknowledge the effort, is very satisfying. I have had the opportunity to discuss sport and my articles with people from around the globe.

We were able to exchange opinions, ideas and concerns without malice or ill-feeling and yet still convey the passion that we obviously have for the topic at hand. Race, religion or personal circumstances weren’t relevant to these discussions. Sport is a common language that the entire planet can speak. Sure, it’s not a life-and-death issue, but don’t assume for a moment that it’s not important.