How can I make my peace with the ceaseless march of sport?

It’s more of a vague aspiration than a new year’s resolution, but 2012, I have decided, is going to be the year in which I come to terms with sport. Because I’m going to have to. Because I suspect that not being keen on sport in London in the year of the Olympics is going to be like not being keen on swastikas in Paris in 1940. When the flags roll down Marble Arch, when the foreign dignitaries sweep through town as if they own it, it’s not going to be something that one can ignore. And, while I’m aware that ‘just get with the programme’ would not have been suitable advice for occupied Parisians, I’m also aware that my instinctive comparison between the Nazis and the International Olympic Committee may be a touch, erm, de trop. So I’m going to have to get over it. Although it won’t be easy.

I struggle with sport. I always have. I just don’t value it or respect the abilities of people who do it. I’m not saying this is right or fair, I’m just saying it’s how it is. I can try, but I’ll always be faking it. Sometimes I respect them enormously, but when I get properly introspective about why this is, it invariably boils down to me brimming with admiration for the way they’re involved in sport and yet simultaneously not arseholes. Again, this isn’t me making a case. I’m merely stating my prejudices, which I have never yet managed to conquer.

It’s a problem. For starters, it alienates you from a good 40 per cent of any conversation that anybody in newspapers has about anything. I don’t just mean the ‘Did you see the match last night?’ variety. I also mean the wider, newsier angles, particularly with football. When a footballer says something racist to another footballer; when a pair of them team up to have sex with opposing ends of an only slightly willing girl; when Fifa brazenly sells the World Cup to a country without grass in it, I’m entirely at a loss as to what there is to talk about.