Maybe it was the passing of yet another birthday; maybe it was the fact that I had just become the proud father of a healthy son and heir but the last few weeks have seen me getting more and more nostalgic.

Working on a sports desk, where a large number of the items that come our way include the off-field trials and tribulations of athletes rather than their on-field performances, hasn't helped. Whatever happened to the good old days when athletes played for fun, and sports acted as a common bond between people of all walks of life, when sportsmen took genuine pride in playing for their team and country?

Looking back though, I may have been brainwashed from an early age. One of my earliest memories is of traveling five bays down the coast of Cornwall in an Austin A-30 (how's that for nostalgia?) so that we could watch the opening ceremony of the Sapporo Winter Olympics on color TV at the local golf club. Of course there was a reason for this. My father, in his third Olympics as a bobsledder, was carrying the British flag. The following day my brother and I were the talk of Padstow Primary School as Dad made it onto the front pages of all the newspapers.

"We may not be the best at winning medals but at least we can hold our bloody flag properly," he was quoted as saying, a quote that was to get him into several different editions of Quotes of the Year and Great Sporting Quotes.

"It's not the winning that is important, it's the taking part," was something I was taught from an early age. Of course, winning makes things more enjoyable, but the underlying message was that sports should be fun. At the same time I was taught that you should take great pride in playing for whatever team you are in -- whether it is the under-14 rugby team, the Vets cricket team or, if you are lucky enough and talented enough, your national team.

It's no surprise then, that my boyhood heroes were the likes of Andy Irvine, Jim Renwick and Willie John McBride; Doug Walters, Rodney Marsh and Ian Botham; Pat Jennings, Duncan McKenzie and Mick Channon. These were players who did play, or would have played, for their clubs and countries for free. Players who played hard on the field but enjoyed the company of their teammates and opponents off it.

These men were known to let their hair down but it was down in a way that didn't upset people or reach the front page. Whether it was Walters getting himself out in a match of little importance so he could get back to his poker game; Marsh drinking 50 cans of beer on the flight from Perth to London; or McBride's "And how many of these police will there be?" in response to a hotel owner in South Africa who threatened to call the cops on the touring Lions team that had just clinched the series against the Springboks, the players were all characters of the highest order.

Nowadays players are often surrounded by an entourage of agents, managers, physios, hangers-on, etc. Back then the only agents I had ever heard of were Napoleon Solo and Ilya Koriyaken -- and if anyone can tell me who The Man (singular) from UNCLE was, as opposed to the Men (plural), I would be most grateful.

International sports, and particularly the non-professional sports such as rugby, track and field and other Olympic events, were a chance for doctors to play alongside miners; for lawyers and dockers to sit on the bench together; for millionaire-businessmen to play against teachers. As more and more money is pumped into sports, the characters that once graced the fields seem to be disappearing.

Today professional athletes only compete against fellow professionals. The absurd sums of money they are paid means they only associate with other athletes, or pop-stars, super-models and actors. In many cases their grip on reality seems to have vanished. Rather than addressing the problem the clubs and the media simply pay the players more. Athletes getting paid to write ghost articles, sponsorship deals, marketing rights have only made the problem worse.

As Clive Woodward, manager of the England rugby team, recently said, "Sportsmen should stay as sportsmen, journalists as journalists, and sport should be on the sports channels and not the movie channels."

The players are in a no-win situation. Like all of us they look at what the competition is getting and want a piece of it. The clubs likewise don't want an opponent getting an upper-hand. The end result? Greed. Players take on too many extra-curricular activities; clubs take on too many games and countries, forced to keep pace, also increase their fixture lists.

The result is an excess of games and competitions at both club and international level.

While it was once an honor to play for your country, it is now a chore. And the problem has even reached Japan. Players such as Ichiro Suzuki and Hidetoshi Nakata have both turned down chances to play for Japan because it interfered with their duties for the club that, they quite correctly point out, pays them. The Japan Rugby Football Union has for many years complained that the corporate rugby teams have been holding back players and preventing them from playing for the national team.

One wonders what "Red" Conway, "Buck" Shelford or Paul Simpson would make of all this.

Conway was a tough, rugged rugby player from the Bay of Plenty. In 1960, just before the All Blacks were due to tour South Africa, Conway broke his little finger. The break was bad and the doctor told him that he would have to miss the tour. Conway was horrified. Like many Kiwis, being picked to play in the famed black jersey was the ultimate honor for a New Zealander. The doctor was adamant, and added jokingly that the only solution was if Conway had the finger chopped off. Now being a farmer, rather than a concert violinist, Conway jumped at the chance, plonked his finger on the table and said "Fine, cut it off." The doctor eventually did and Conway went on tour to South Africa minus his pinky. After all what's more important -- playing for your country or a little finger?

Shelford almost paid the ultimate sacrifice for playing for his country. In 1986 in Nantes, France, the tough, uncompromising All Black (maybe this says something about New Zealanders) was playing in only his second test match.

Former teammate John Gallagher takes up the story: "Buck had his scrotum ripped causing a testicle to drop out after 20 minutes, but did not come off the field until 10 minutes before the end -- with another injury." In fact Shelford was carried off concussed, with three of his teeth missing, and had to have 18 stitches to repair the damage "downstairs".

Of course most of us can only dream of playing for our country and only fantasize as to what lengths we would go to play for our national team. But last month I lined up alongside former England hooker Brian Moore for the British and Irish Lions opposite the most famous rugby player in Japan as we took on Japan at Chichibunomiya.

All right it was the Parliamentary Lions (a team composed of British and Irish politicians and assorted guests) and the player in question was Yoshiro Mori but that's my point! Where else would you get the opportunity to legitimately "bosh" a former prime minister and then share a beer with him afterward? Sport had bonded us together.

My only regret was that the small cut on my head didn't allow me to join the "Paul Simpson School of Players." Simpson made his debut for England in 1983 against New Zealand. During the course of the game he received a head wound that needed constant attention. At the final whistle he returned to the dressing room to be told that the wound needed stitching. Simpson, in no uncertain terms, told the doctor what to do with his needle. "I want that scar as a reminder of today. I want to show my family and friends what I got playing for my country."

For the sake of the women and children of New Zealand, I can only hope and pray that Buck Shelford kept his scars to the locker room.