SEPTEMBER 19 -- The Rugby World Cup started last night, with hosts England taking on Fiji at Twickenham.

But I’m afraid that’s more or less all I can tell you.

That is because I have a problem with rugby. Well, not a problem as such ― I don’t actively dislike the sport. But, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t force myself to find it interesting.

It’s a strange thing because I am an unashamed sports addict, especially when a team and a ball are involved.

Like many Brits, football and cricket are my first loves. After a childhood playing both of them as often as possible, I have now spent nearly two decades making a living writing and talking about the former, while a four-day club tour playing the latter was one of my highlights of this summer.

I don’t restrict my sporting interests to just those two traditional sports, however. I played and enjoyed hockey at school, I have followed American Football closely ever since the NFL first appeared on British television screens in the mid-1980s, and more recently I have derived great enjoyment from working with Euroleague Basketball.

On the level of individual sports, I used to play snooker (rather well… I was even Newbury’s junior champion one long-ago Easter, I’ll have you know), golf (very badly… which is why I don’t play any longer) and shortly after writing this article I will meet a friend for a game of tennis.

So basically, you can give me a ball and I will be happy. I can throw it, run after it, kick it, catch it, hit it… it really doesn’t matter to me too much. I can find and enjoy sport in pretty much anything.

But when it comes to rugby ― league or union ― I just have a mental block and struggle to watch more than five minutes of a game before my attention starts to wander.

I don’t know why this is the case and I have certainly given rugby every chance to enter into my sporting life. I attended a rugby-playing school, and for a few years in my teens I played in my year’s impressively unsuccessful second XV. I even almost scored a try once.

But that failed to arouse any interest in the sport. As far as I recall there was no particular reason for my apathy – no horrendous injuries, no emotional narrow defeats (we lost more easily than that), no embarrassing personal failures – yet even the experience of playing proper team rugby with my schoolmates just left me… well, bored.

In later years, the football club I worked for, Reading, shared stadium facilities with one of the UK’s leading professional rugby teams, London Irish.

I got on very well with my counterparts at the rugby club and they kindly gave me an open invite to attend any game I wanted, but I never did. Our stadium hosted a European (Heineken) Cup semi-final, the domestic (Tetley’s) cup semi-final, and a Rugby League World Cup game (New Zealand against someone, I don’t recall) ― all major events which you would think might have awoken my interest. But they didn’t.

Back in 2003, England actually won the World Cup for the very first (and last) time. Much of the nation was captivated as the team managed by Clive Woodward and captained by Martin Johnson (you see, I can remember that much) made their progress into the final.

I did my patriotic duty and got up early one Saturday morning to watch the final, which was played in Sydney against hosts Australia. After nearly falling asleep a few times during the game, I did manage to raise a cheer when Jonny Wilkinson kicked a last minute drop kick to win the trophy.

It was spectacular, dramatic, comic book stuff ― winning a World Cup in the final seconds of extra time with a nerveless kick through the posts… sport doesn’t get much better. By now, though, you won’t be surprised to learn that despite my forced cheers, my internal reaction was an apathetic shrug. And then I went back to bed.

It was at that point that I simply decided to give up on rugby: if my own country winning the World Cup in highly dramatic circumstances was not enough to make me find the sport interesting, nothing ever could.

Since then, I have attempted to analyse what it is about rugby that turns me off. All I can come up with is that it is too slow ― tries are generally scored after long, elaborate phases of build-up play, rather than spectacular bursts of action.

The very structure of the sport ― the fact that forward passes are not allowed ― prohibits fast action and makes it an attritional and gradually unfolding affair.

I also find it frustrating that the ball is hidden from view for much of the time, during rucks, mauls and scrums, and that many penalties are awarded for subjective judgment calls which only the referee can see among a mass of bodies on the floor.

But really, these are just quibbles and personal preferences. I can perfectly accept that the sport has plenty of tactical and technical qualities, the players are highly skilled, fit and athletic, and that lots of people will thoroughly enjoy the newly-started World Cup.

I just won’t be one of them.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.