Let us imagine that we are playing a word-association game. I say “rugby” and you say the first thing that comes into your head. Let me guess. Men. Mud. Wilkinson. Dirty. Beer. Props. Pit ponies. Drinking games. Ugly. Blood. Posh. Twickers. Jonners. Heroic. Accident and emergency.

You could keep going for the length of this column, but I guarantee you'd never get to “sex”. Because there is absolutely nothing remotely sexy about rugby players. Nothing at all. Nice blokes, but metrosexuals? Never.

I give you Brian Moore. Or Sébastien Chabal. I give you 15 men stripped to their underpants singing The 12 Hours of Rugby (to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas): “In the first hour of rugby, my prop he asked of me/“Why is my beer mug empty?/ “In the second hour of rugby, my prop he asked of me...” ad infinitum.

Rugby players' heads are too full of lineout calls and scissor moves to consider women. Their priorities are the game, their mates, the bar and much later women, whom they hunt in a drunken pack, and therefore unsuccessfully.

Rugby may be a substitute for sex; it may be a displacement activity for the emotionally retarded; it may even be the nearest some men get to physical affection; but up to now, no, its particpants have never been sexy.

Hilariously, however, Mills & Boon has decided to sprinkle some stardust on the oval-ball game by getting into bed with the RFU. In the first novel to feature rugby players, to be published before the RBS Six Nations, there is a sex scene set in Twickenham.

And, as if planned, Amy Winehouse has been seen in the unlikely arms of a wholesome-looking former rugby player, said to be a friend of Danny Cipriani, himself alleged to have dated a transsexual without realising it. Simple chaps, rugby players; vulnerable when let out on their own.

Then there is Zara Phillips and her amiable squeeze, Mike Tindall, who is like all other rugby players: big, cuddly, loveable and appealing because they make women look petite and feel safe. But one can say exactly the same of a Labrador.

The only sex in rugby is endearingly innocent homoeroticism. There is no other way to rationalise grown men eagerly grasping their team mates' groins and indulging in every kind of physical contact short of penetration. Stade Français - and remember, the French aren't confused about sex - sell calendars of their oiled hunks to the gay market.

And if you really, really want to know the sexual psychology of rugby, read all 70 filthy verses of Eskimo Nell. This tale of Deadeye Dick and Mexican Pete in a brothel ends in ghastly emasculation by a woman. Safer together on the pitch, lads. It's all you need to know.

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