My earliest memories of a sporting Saturday would be playing school hockey, and my most vivid recollection is playing away at Berwick for Jedburgh Grammar. I played 'right-inner' - is that even a position now? - but Berwick's pitch was on the top of a cliff.

You'd be playing one minute, the next, you could see nothing as a Baltic, freezing cold haar just rolled in off the North Sea. 

After a quick lunch, and a bit of Dickie Davies on World of Sport - I even remember the wrestling from back then, but doesn't everyone? - I'd head off to the rugby with Har Thomson, who was like an added grandparent to us, and he would take us to see Hawick, home and away.

We travelled everywhere, and of course this was at a time when Hawick just never lost and had a team full of Scotland international stars - like Colin Deans, Alan Tomes, Jim Renwick, Alister Campbell. It was great, running around the country watching them, having cheeky wee 5p side bets on the penalties and goal kicks, and then back to Mansfield Park at night, in the club rooms where you mixed with your heroes.

There was no separation between the players and the supporters. You were all in it together. One week you'd be standing with them, the next they would be on TV playing in the Five Nations. Great times.

One of the best days was when we were heading to the Selkirk Sevens and came across the Hawick team bus, broken down and with the players at the side of the road. Of course we stopped!

We all had to bunch up in the car to get a couple of them in so they'd make it there for the start. An unexpected thrill!

When I moved in to newspapers, then I'd be reporting on the games I'd previously have been watching as a fan. Of course, I was impartial. It was tested because by then I was seeing Carl (Hogg) and he was playing with Melrose, who like Hawick previously, won everything during the 90's.

I was still a Hawick fan, but, wanted him to do well. Ideally Hawick would win but Carl would score a fantastic try!

Again, the rugby and real life were inseparable. Carl and me were great friends with Bryan Redpath, Graham Shiel and Robbie Brown and their wives and we all lived in the same street. There were a few parties - and a few raiding parties in to other people's houses on the scrounge for milk.

My Saturdays changed again once I moved into broadcasting. I could be in the Sportscene studios, doing football and rugby results, or,  kicking off the mornings on Sky, with Michael Lynagh and Sean Fitzpatrick, doing one of the early matches from Australia or New Zealand. But once I'd finished, it was back to the old routine, on the rugby beat, either watching a match at The Stoop, or, wherever Carl was with Leeds.

And even today, if I'm away working flat out covering cycling, or snooker, or rugby, I want to get back home for my 'traditional' Saturday. While the mornings are taken up with schools rugby, or netball, or  hockey, with my kids, Johnnie and Rosie, the afternoons are still about watching live rugby.

That means Worcester Warriors, or Gloucester - we like the cherry and whites - where we get to see some fantastic Premiership teams  or our home-town team of Cheltenham, a proper rugby club and one which reminds me so much of Hawick, a real community club. I have the very great privilege of being Lady President of the club.

But the most high-pressure job I have is being manager of the under-11's boys rugby team - manager, not coach - looking after about 30 of them, making sure everyone is where they are supposed to be, and, there are enough sausages for everyone.

Living in Cheltenham allows me to indulge in another of my sporting loves, jump racing. I grew up with NH racing at Kelso, but believe it or not, my connection with Cheltenham dates back 30 years.

The family in the next door farm to us, the Hamiltons, owned a chaser called Earls Brig, and I bunked off school to go to the Cheltenham Festival. 

I saw  the 1987 Gold Cup, won by The Thinker, in the snow. You don't get many days as good as that.

Now, I live in Cheltenham and the course is right on our doorstep and that means we don't miss much.

I need to confess I do have an involvement in a few horses - 'involvement' means maybe slightly more than an ear or a hoof - and that means you have a very different interest level in what is going on when they are running.

Next month I'm going to be back up in Scotland for a few things, but especially to see Scotland take on the All Blacks at Murrayfield.

Even though I get to see some incredible sporting events, and get up really close to the action, there is still something about just being a fan and doing it for the love of it.

After all, that's what got me in to sport and rugby and horse racing, long before newspapers and television, and I don't think that will ever leave me.