I'm an avid TV sports watcher. Put just about any sport on TV and I'll watch it. There are a few exceptions (since some of you will no doubt ask, the exceptions include horse racing, synchronised swimming, boxing and bullfighting) but, broadly speaking, top-level sport is worth watching anytime ... even if I don't understand the game.

Even better, make it live, and I'm gone. Totally ga-ga. Transfixed. Mesmerised. Square-eyed. Gone.

Living as I do in Australia, watching live TV sports can sometimes be a bit of a problem. You see, there's a lot of sport which - for some reason I can't quite fathom - is played on the opposite side of the world. This means that quite frequently the live broadcast will start at some early, early hour of the morning and finish at about the time when decent, hard-working, sensible, sane people are leaving home to head off for a day's work.

Getting ready for a one-off broadcast isn't too much of a problem. I just make sure that I have plenty of sleep in the day leading up to the event. Then, I toddle off to the office, somehow struggle through the day's work, go home and collapse.

However, tournaments pose a different problem. With the approach of the 1996 Olympic Games, I had to get into serious training. Luckily, the European Championships were being held in England, giving me a few weeks' fairly easy training.

Now then, it all depends where you brought up. Officially, the tournament was Association Football. To me, it was football. The game's common title nowadays seems to be "soccer". This is one of my favourite sports. (I also think that it is one of the easiest, most natural sports to play. What could be more natural than giving something on the ground a kick as you go along? Especially if it then rolls even vaguely in the direction you wanted it to go? If you're like me, the immediate reaction to that is to give the thing another kick. Natural. Easy.)

There has been quite a lot of talk about making soccer more interesting and entertaining. I can understand why some people may find a game that is played for 90 minutes with no scoring to be a little on the boring side, so, while I am basically a soccer purist, I am not someone who decries all change to the game.

In the latter stages of the European Championships, games HAD to be decided, since the tournament was, by then, a knock-out - win or you're out.

Rather than impose some slightly saner new rules on the game as a whole (like reducing the number of players in each side or increasing the size of the goals), some years ago the authorities brought in the "penalty shoot-out" to decide games which have to have a result. Admittedly, this is better than the previous method which was for the two captains to join the referee in his changing-room ... and then toss a coin!

In the USA, there seems to be no such thing as a drawn game. There's overtime, double overtime, triple overtime, etc., until there's a result. Which is fine if it doesn't cause any problems with TV scheduling ... but, in this day and age, we all know that TV rules many sports.

The problem I have with soccer's penalty shoot-out is that it tests only one aspect of the game. The good thing about overtime (or extra time) is that the game continues and really tests the players' stamina and abilities, and the teams' tactics and strategies to the fullest.

As a purist, to me the penalty shoot-out may allow a result, but it is a flawed result. I don't like rule changes that twist and contort the nature of the sport, so that frequently it seems as though the round peg of the sport is being moulded to fit into the square hole ("screen"?) of the TV schedule.

Despite what some of us may think and say from time to time, we're lucky, as F1 fans, that the sport is basically the same as it has always been - it's all about going as fast as you can for the entire length of a race.

Oh, there's been some fiddling around with the rules over the years. But that could be quite easily justified by noting that it is a technological sport, rather than solely a human sport ... or that the changes have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

You could say that there are marked differences between a sport like soccer and a sport like F1. You could say that technology plays no part in soccer, and plays a huge part in F1. And I would have to disagree with you.

I would have to agree that technology seems to play no part in soccer. But then I would point you towards other "solely human" activities such as athletics and swimming, where records have consistently fallen over the years.

Then I would suggest to you that it is our understanding of human technology that has allowed performance increases. "Sports medicine" was a field that didn't exist too many years ago. If a player pulled a hamstring, the recovery period was quite long.

Today, with devices like ultra-sound, they can be back playing much sooner. Better understanding of bio-mechanics has allowed trainers to develop techniques that emphasise the proper body conditions for maximum performance. And dietary considerations add into this as well.

Meanwhile in F1, it is our understanding of mechanical technology that has allowed performance increases. All of the mechanical changes that have come into F1 over the years have always been around us - we just didn't know how to use them. To be sure, for some things (like carbon fibre, for example), there have been quite a few steps along the way to get to the final product, we just had to learn how to walk.

And, in the meantime, our understanding of human technology has allowed drivers to make more and more use of the innovations in mechanical technology and push their bodies that little bit further all the time.

But that's just me.