DADDY (UN)COOL

Our new anonymous male columnist talks about tending to his two loves: family and the 6 Nations

Children are, in general, great. There is clearly no substitute for the level of ludicrously heightened emotions that the little 'uns can evoke – whether happiness, hysteria or heartbreak.

The trouble is, for the best part of 25 years sport provided that kind of emotional tinder for me. I’m talking about watching, not playing. People play sport for comradery, fitness and to scratch a primal competitive itch. People watch sport to get leathered, make up statistics and scream at an inanimate object mounted on a pub wall.

And so a conundrum rears up. Let’s take Saturdays in February as a good example; time for snowman building and, perhaps, a long walk with the family followed by a warming cup of hot chocolate. Frustratingly (for my wife), it’s also a time for the fortress of Twickenham, Welsh voices in song, Irish side steps, French up-and-unders, Scottish resilience and Italian flare.

The annual 6 Nations rugby union tournament may only last for a few weeks but it sets the winter on fire for all those eager to watch a bunch of cauliflower-eared hulks squash each other over possession of an odd-shaped ball. And, like a great deal of sport, it usually happens at that point in the afternoon that's reserved for “Daddy time”.

I love Daddy time. I really do. Time with my two boys is like gold dust and I cherish as much of it as I can get*. * = almost

It's not as simple as "pub vs kids". It is more than that. I really WANT to share the 6 Nations with my boys, for them to feel the passion that I do when “swing low” booms across a cold, concrete stadium in West London. I remember watching the 5 Nations, as it then was, sitting on my father’s back as he lay on the floor next to the fire in our family home; him banging the floor with his fist in excitement as Jonathon Webb broke through the Irish defence with the brilliantly-named Peter Winterbottom in support.

The reality is that my 3-year-old is more keen on Fireman Sam, the Backyardigans (wtf?) and playing with his willy. The chance of him staying interested through an 80-minute game of rugby is on a par with the chance of the Norman Price getting through a day without setting Pontypandy ablaze. The one-year-old is, of course, for now a total write-off as a sport-watching comrade and is happier jamming potentially-lethal objects into his mouth.

And so, to the pub.

What tears me up is the quandry between spending all my precious weekend with my wife and kids and knowing if Jonathon Joseph will continue to shrug off tackles; whether George Ford can perform for England as he does Bath and if maybe, just maybe, the English could sneak their first grand slam since 2003.

I know I'm not coming across great here. The thing is family is my life, but sport matters, too and given time I hope it matters to my boys and we can all bellow and booze as one. I just thank my lucky stars I'm not a football fan; I take my hat off to all that are. Test cricket, on the other hand, brings out the devil in me. But we can discuss that in the Summer... COME ON ENGLAND!