When people ask what I do for a living, they tend to either shrug their shoulders or on the rare occasion get misty eyed and think it must be the best job going.
Most guys and girls I work with adore what they do and I feel lucky every day that I get to write about sport, and predominantly football for that matter, and get paid for it.
But if I was to pick a difficult part of the job and something most football reporters wince a little at when asked to cover, two hyphenated words would sum it up pre-season.
Now we all know that football clubs will want to use all of their squad members in pre-season friendlies to get their players fit, and no doubt managers will cast their eye over certain players with a view to potentially signing them.
Generally, however, friendly fixtures are an absolute nightmare almost akin to herding cats.
I first encountered the potential pitfalls as a fledgling reporter during a Fife Cup game between East Fife and amateur outfit Burntisland Shipyard, when Shipyard took to the field with no numbers on their backs.
Normally at games you are also handed the luxury of a team-sheet telling you who’s who, but on that occasion I spent most of the 90 minutes praying the amateurs would not score purely for logistical purposes I might add.
They did, if I can remember rightly, but the guy who scored fortunately went to my school and my powers of recollection aided my match report greatly.
But the scourge of pre-season does not just affect that level of the beautiful game.
Even at SPL or First Division clubs, normally well-oiled machines which support the press so well throughout the season tend to have some sort of breakdown and that invariably leads to reporters trying to cover such games doing likewise.
If you are fortunate to be handed a team-sheet at all, more often than not it will be full of errors and spelling mistakes.
One I encountered last week had just 10 outfield players listed before officials realised the obvious booboo and quickly rectified it.
And then there’s the repeated use of the word ‘Trialist’, which again throws up more questions than answers.
Seasoned journos spot THAT word on a team-sheet and often huddle together trying to work out who said ‘Trialist’ is to try to keep the reading or watching public as informed as possible.
Technology has helped somewhat in that respect, although typing in ‘Footballer who looks like Kris Boyd but isn’t Kris Boyd’ into Google Search does not help one iota.
But even once you manage to identify the 22 players on the pitch, then comes a raft of substitutions which have no rhyme or reason and puts you right back to square one.
Dundee changed virtually their entire team at half-time against Montrose last week, and that might have been easy to deal with if it hadn’t been for the fact that yes, you guessed it, the Dark Blues didn’t have any numbers on their backs.
Don’t get me wrong, sports reporters bravely get on with the task in hand, continue to beat their deadlines and generally get most things right.
But I think I speak for most of the profession when I say: ‘Roll on the new season’.