I can’t help noticing how intimate things are in the scrum, particularly the way big second row chaps slip their beefy arms up between the legs of the chubby props to grab the tops of their shorts. Is it really necessary?

SJ, Cheam

No.

I watch the violent hits the players take when tackled or caught up in a ruck. I see the maulings they suffer in the loose forward play and I look at their deformed ears and battered noses – and I ask why on earth any one would want to play rugby?

KP, Cherry Hinton

You have obviously never slipped your arm between the sweaty thighs of a chubby prop, or grasped the steel buttocks of a writhing winger caught in a maul, nor had your breath taken away by a dashing fl anker taking you by surprise with stealthy brutality on the fringes of the scrum ... And then they sit around in a communal bath afterwards singing. It was years before I could get Mr Mills to give up the game (and a while after that for him to give up the bath).

My husband and I have always enjoyed a healthy and an active sex life, but over the past few weeks he has refused to make love unless I call out “Crouch – touch – pause – engage” before we begin. Should I worry about this?

FA, Twickenham

It depends. It’s a very complicated game and a host of questions need to be considered. Is he deliberately collapsing before you have properly got going? Is he trying to turn through more than 90 degrees? Is he keeping it in while pushing you back? Or does he whip it out quickly and sprint off? On the whole, though, as long as he keeps fi nding his touch, I’d go along with it.

After playing a lot of rugby my boyfriend has started to develop something called “caulifl ower ear”. I’m worried: will other parts of his anatomy begin turning into strange vegetables?

DS, Hampshire

Not unless he gets scrumpox.