Rugby is the theatre of daydreams

If he had announced that to Andy Gray, the latter would have assumed he had come to take his car away. Barnes is also fleet of phrase.

Of Wasps fly-half Alex King he noted, "he's running this game from an armchair", a position with which I am in full sympathy. The hairstyle of Wasps hooker Trevor Leota was described as "a cigarette burn on a rug".

Even with such fluent commentators, the problem with rugby as a spectator sport is that no one fully understands the rules.

In the old days the definition of doing your head in was trying to explain the offside rule in football to a fidgety girl. In rugby, the offside rule is not only more complicated, but is also just the tip of an iceberg of rules that freezes the blood.

Rugby is like cricket with extra blood. And just to confound anyone who thought they had got the hang of it through the recent World Cup, the Heineken think-tank have come up with a system of bonus points that depend on who score the most tries while in the grip of the most garish jock-strap.

I feel it is going to take rugby union some time to make a credible assault on the hearts and minds of the British public. Goodwill is soon eroded by ignorance.

The referees try to help by letting us know constantly what is on their minds, which is to stamp out 1001 types of infringement.

The Perpignan trainer helped by dashing on to the field brandishing a high-tech pair of scissors when one of his players had a bootlace problem.

But in the end, we have to understand.