Karma may not be instant, but it is invariably ironic. So it is that, after four decades of remaining steadfastly opposed to competitive sport, I now spend early mornings, late afternoons, occasional evenings and every weekend driving my children to an ever-expanding range of sporting activities.

The sharpest twist of the irony blade is that, having spent my own childhood as the player no wise coach would want on his team, I am now the coach of four separate floorball teams. (Yes, I know you haven’t heard of floorball, look it up.) To coach one team may be regarded as an accident; four looks like a weird addiction. But here I am.

Coaching competitive kids sport often feels like a pure and highly concentrated form of parenting. If parenthood spells out your failings as a human being across several decades, coaching tends to do so in half hour bursts, with a running scorecard. Many of the parenting decisions you make under pressure will be wrong, but rarely can they be so well quantified.

As with parenting, coaching has brought me into close and uncomfortable contact with aspects of my own character that had been hitherto concealed. In my pre-sporting life, I prided myself on being rational and easygoing. Unfussed and unruffled. It turns out that this calm exterior was a front – I am instead ruthlessly competitive, capable of resisting the doe-eyed........

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