As a young one in London, I knew enough about the offside rule and poor, doomed football clubs to haul myself along to QPR matches on a Saturday. I was of an age and a time to be fairly catholic and credulous about sport. Any code that featured committed athletes in a fairly-fought contest was of passing interest.
I can't pinpoint the moment when I stopped caring. It all melded into a blur of drugs, cheats, "professional" fouls, narcissism, exploitation, bungs, riots, bigotry, GBH and loss of life. A troupe of immature, grossly overpaid lads who behaved like cretinous yobs on and off the pitch and who had never been further than Marbella without an entourage of minders, flak-catchers, agents, ghostwriters, baggage masters, and so on, were being driven by cynical mentors to regard a few hours of light entertainment on a Saturday as an act of war.
This summer, more than ever, we bore witness to the coarse, ugly, stupid travesty that now passes for sport.
We now know for sure that concepts like shame and honour - the values that drive a true sportsman, defined by the Oxford dictionary as a "person who behaves fairly and generously" - have vanished. No need to be shameful about your foul deeds on the pitch; just be "honest" in recounting them for your lucrative book deal.
No need to glory in taking part - just do what you have to do to win, as a rugby player put it recently, having just cheated shamelessly at a crucial stage in a match.
In a later competition, when the parents of a defeated senior Irish player declared that this was how his team should have approached the game - "unforgiveable naivety" they called their team's performance - I finally called time on "sport".
What does the word mean anymore? What is a real sports fan?
Someone who believes that winning means nothing without some basic ethic of fairness and generosity, or who thinks that intimidating a referee during half-time is an excellent ploy?
As a panellist on Today FM's radio show The Sunday Supplement, I introduced a comment on the Roy Keane fiasco by saying that I didn't give a toss about sport.
That is not the same as ignorance of sport; the other adult in the house makes a sizeable part of his living from it so I probably know far more than I need to know. But it's a simple enough topic anyway, on which any of us is entitled to spout an opinion. Right? Wrong.
In recent weeks, a few pulpit-thumping sportswriters and their acolytes have been simmering at the notion of "casual" commentators trampling on their patch of expertise.
On the show, I suggested that as a parent and a fan of civilisation, I had a valid interest in how the Keane revelations were handled.
I also drew attention to an Observer report that Keane - who had repeated to the interviewer that he would do the same again to Haaland - had rung back weeks later to say that he had "never set out to deliberately injure any player".
This was news to me. But what did it mean? The belated attentions of the lawyers or some kind of mature reflection?
Of well over 100 calls to the show on this topic alone, only a tiny fraction addressed the issues. The rest applied the thug's credo: play the man, not the ball. Examples: "Female comments on football will always be ignored - thank God." Or "What do your two bimbo guests know about football?" (The other "bimbo" being a passionate, paid-up Man United fan of 22 years standing). "Typical woman bullshit. Send her home." "Shut that woman up."
But amid the mindless drivel, a few comments did give me pause: "Kathy is a waffler who hasn't a clue about aggression, or competitiveness in football." "Football, like all other sports, is a form of ritualised warfare." "I went out in GAA club games to get people back. It happens in sport all the time. Get over it."
It's all true, no doubt. John B. Keane (who was famously combative in his youth) once told me that "scraps were good things, especially on the football pitch, where wise referees let lads get on with it".
All fine and dandy, but where do you draw the line? And can the same line be applied equally to win-at-all-cost professional sportsmen on €100,000 a week?
On the radio show, one caller, "tired of hearing Roy Keane's behaviour excused because he's brilliant", remarked that "the world is full of brilliant people who behave".
And maybe that's what the whole summer-long soccer schism comes down to. No one disputes that Roy Keane is a footballing genius, not even this bimbo. The question is, just how far do you go in indulging such genius?
To begin with, a sense of proportion would be a fine thing. Football is not more important than life and death.
Come back and talk about "acts of war", boys, once you've looked into a mass grave in the Balkans or met a woman fresh from incarceration in a "rape camp".
Soccer is only a game, after all, a game that once was beautiful.