I’ve been here since the British government nominated me to be a Member of the European Commission in 1995. I had the Transport portfolio until 1999 when, in the new Commission, I was appointed Vice-President in charge of Reform.

What do you like about rugby?

It’s the World’s greatest team sport – before, during and after the game takes place.

Whether you are slogging and grinding on the field or watching the Poetry in Motion of the Greats, you know that you are part of a sport in which 15 people really depend on each other – 16 if the ref is on the other side.

You turn up to hated training because, if you didn’t, you’d let the other chaps down in a most disloyal way – or be dropped. You get and give the ball in play because it’s the only way to attack or defend – and the best way to avoid being battered. And, after the game, no other sport provides such comradeship and creative entertainment – if you can remember it.

On top of all that, the game was invented by God. Why else would the human instep so perfectly conform to the shape of a rugby ball?

Being Welsh, of course, nurtures a love of rugby from an early age in a land where babies have been weaned on gumshields for many years. It isn’t just the brilliance of our players at home that produces such a culture, its also the off-spring of those that went to distant lands like New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Surrey and – of course – France in the Welsh diaspora.

Shane Howarth, Colin Charvis and Katharine Zeta Jones are just three of the heart warming results of that, although the International Rugby Board sometimes likes to pretend otherwise, bless them.

And, above all, the reason to love rugby is that it is the cleanest game. It is totally free of all that nasty drug taking and money grubbing that disfigures other modern sports. Who needs performance enhancement when a slice of lemon at half time, and a couple of pints and a song after the game, give all the stimulus needed? And who, in rugby, will descend to the darkness of the mucky market place over TV rights and transfer fees when Clubs and countries and players want no more than the joyful spirit of the game and their bus fare? That’s the secret of rugby. There are a few rogues on the make, of course. But the great majority who play the game couldn’t be bought and wouldn’t be sold… Er, I’ve got that the right way round haven’t I…

Neil Kinnock 7 September 2000