I am having sleepless nights about Jonny Wilkinson's balls. Am I normal?
This has never happened to me before, and I am pretty sure I am not alone. I have always been a fan of the round ball favoured by footballers, seduced by the hyperbole of the beautiful game.
In comparison to the game illuminated by the artistry of Pele, Cruyff and Best, rugby is the ugly game. It is also a daft game, with rules that are more complicated than chess.
Neither does the shape of the ball make any sense. The football is an infinitely superior design, lending itself to skilful manipulation with the boot and laces rather than the "whack it and hope" philosophy espoused by rugby players.
When rugger players "kick for touch," the two pointy ends of the egg-shaped ball mean it can fly off in any direction when it hits the grass. Chance, rather than deftness of application, appears to dictate whether a raking 50-yard kick bounces triumphantly into touch, or flies up into the arms of the opposing team.
Give a child a football and he, or she, can keep themselves entertained for hours, chipping it against a wall, or balancing it in the air. Try chucking a rugby ball against a wall, or playing keepy uppy. It's not much fun.
But how wrong I have been; how poorly have I under-estimated the power of the prolate spheroid. My eyes have been opened by the glory of the running maul.
I, too, have been swept along by the irresistible force of national optimism sparked by England's progress in the Rugby World Cup; and what a thoroughly refreshing spectacle it has been compared with the spite and bile that has come to typify the modern game of football.
To the relative novice, such as myself, the first shocking realisation is this: rugby players respect the decision of the referee. Other than boxing, I cannot think of a more brutal sport than rugby, where smashed noses, shattered teeth, bloody gashes and crunched limbs are an occupational hazard. Such a ferocity of combat would lead to bedlam in the namby-pamby world of football, where every offside infringement, throw-in and gutsy tackle is challenged by everyone, including the goalkeepers, who might be 100 yards from the action, and the bloke with the magic sponge and orange segments on the sidelines.
There has been the occasional flare-up in the Rugby World Cup, when tempers have boiled over. Players have been sent to the sin bin or dismissed from the pitch where appropriate, but throughout the bloodiest of encounters the position of the ref has been treated with the utmost respect.
Captains are given the responsibility for enforcing discipline within their own teams, refs refer to transgressors as "gentlemen," and, most astonishingly, players are rebuked for the use of foul language, and warned uncompromisingly as to their future conduct.
Is there any reason why similar rules of engagement cannot be applied to football? Every weekend there is an episode of high farce in the Premier League, a player tumbling to the ground as if they have been felled by a sniper's bullet. A disdain for the rules of the game, and, more disturbingly, a disdain for fellow competitors, bedevils football. At times, the worse practitioners of such play-acting remind one of the hair-pulling antics of the buffoonish Saturday afternoon TV wrestlers of yesteryear.
As a nation, we all too readily castigate ourselves for our yobbish factions, the institutionalised idleness brought on by benefits dependency, and a lack of personal resolve and responsibility.
Hurrah, then, for Jonny Wilkinson, for politely complaining about sub-standard balls inside the Stade de France, having the nous to ask for a decent match one, and kicking it down the throats of the French on Saturday night.
Come the final, I'll be wearing a tweed cap, drinking warm bitter, munching pork scratchings and celebrating the re-birth of the true spirit of Blighty. Engurlund has been banished. It's time to swing low, sweet chariots.