Today, after centuries of school education, of going to church every Sunday and eating with elbows off the table, they don't do such things, of course. Instead, they lose their collective head and chase a largish ball against another benighted team, even as millions of hysterical men scream for and against them. And this they term ``civilisation''.

What I'm going to say may not make me very popular with at least a quarter of humanity but I wish to publicly reaffirm a view I've long held. Football could, in my mind, easily rank as the most mindless activity invented by men for men, of course. And, yes, football viewing could rival chewing gum in the depth of its intellectual stimulation.

But everything wouldhave been alright and football a sport played by seven-year-olds bored with spinning tops, if FIFA hadn't come into the picture. Unfortunately it did and now the game has transmogrified into some kind of primeval male saturnalia which, through satellite devices and excitable football commentators with voices that could pulverise icebergs, has cut a swathe around the world.

Thanks to FIFA's World Cup, some 360-odd players get the licence to leave their spiked footprints on the faces of their opposing players. It means that some men now swing million-dollar sponsorships for themselves and other men, situated in towns and hamlets all over the world, get to eat enormous quantities of potato crisps late into the night.

This month-long indulgence ends on July 12, on which date we will finally get to know who the world champions are -- Nike or Adidas. Because the World Cup is nothing but an ad-op for some to plug everything from Viagra to Niagra and a TV-op for others to scale the most asinine heights ofhyperbole (if the following words are banished from the commentators' lexicon, I promise much of the fizz would go out of the World Cup: ``the greatest spectacle on earth'', ``a titanic battle'', ``the world at their feet'', ``samba soccer'', ``scorching pace'', ``golden boy'', ``hottest property in the country's line-up'', ``cult status'', ``fever pitch'').

I've also long suspected that the game is just a device to gauge the stress threshold of a quarter of humanity and the resilience of millions of marriages around the world. An ingenious means to test the stamina of men who haven't outgrown the habit of wearing shorts and the patience of women who have to clear up the beer bottles and dip bowls in the living room after each match.

It has the power to make some men rich in public adulation and to render the rest of the global male community impoverished of sense. To get the heart of the spectator beating vigorously even as he can be certified by any general physician to being brain-dead. To create scartissue, varicose veins and hernias on some of the world's most expensive bodies and heartburn, indigestion and insomnia in the rest of the male population.

The average football fan -- and I'm not talking only about those who are currently stalking Parisian streets wearing war paint on their faces and nothing under their tartan skirts -- must have the lung-power of a Pavarotti and an IQ of 10. Little wonder, then, that they can sometimes do grievous bodily harm to innocent bystanders, break shop windows and threaten to get the third world war going at a moment's notice.

In this festival of feet, there are ultimately no winners. Only survivors. At one end of the spectrum there are courageous men who have withstood rude remarks, ruder elbows and kicks delivered at 150 kmph and, on the other, there are these brave women who looked after the baby, counted the clothes the dhobi brought it and didn't shudder when crazed husbands emitted wild yowls of despair or howls of delight before the TV screen even as theclock struck two (in the morning, that is).

Ultimately, what's all the fuss about anyway? A 32-panelled ball made of synthetic foam? I am in complete agreement with the person who, when taken to a football match for the first time, asked in puzzled tones: ``Why are 22 adult men fighting over one ball -- can't some more be requisitioned?" Why not, indeed.