An interesting point arose this past weekend while mulling over the thorny issue of the players' marks out of 10 for the game at Burton Albion.
From my experience, nothing in the Chron upsets players more than the ratings we give for every game. It's been a while since anyone has refused to give an interview (or worse) as a result of a low mark, but you could forgive the players if the Burton game had changed that.
While trying to deciding what to award to whom, I asked my colleague Ashley Potter - who covers the Saints rugby club for the paper - if there would ever be a situation where he would have to downgrade a player significantly.
And here's the bad news, footballers. Rugby is a game that does not lend itself to low marks. If a player drops the ball and concedes a try or misses a succession of kicks then the overall impact, because the scoring is more frequent, is lessened.
Goals are everything in football; most games only have two or three, and a huge amount even less, and so when a player is involved in the scoring or the conceding of one it will greatly influence their level of performance.
Of course, goals cannot be taken in isolation, and have to be compared against how the rest of the game went for a player.
Supporters, though, will mainly remember the highs and lows of a match rather than any steady play in between.
Which brings us back to rugby. The only way, we decided, a player would get a substantially low mark is if they were to be sent off for violent play having added nothing to the match in the time they were on the pitch.
Unfortunately for footballers, that happens far less often than goal-creating mistakes.

A can of worms was opened on Tuesday afternoon, when Uefa handed down a two-game ban to Arsenal striker Eduardo for diving in their Champions League qualifier against Celtic.
The club issued a statement on hearing the news, which read: "We have been deeply frustrated by the perfunctory and apparently arbitrary process that Uefa has followed in this instance.
"We believe it is imperative that Uefa's explanation for its decision provides clear and comprehensive standards that will be consistently enforced."
The key word there is arbitrary. Uefa could well have made a rod for their own backs in making this decision, because they will now have to retrospectively consider every alleged dive in every game for some time, and certainly for all of Arsenal's games for some time, one would imagine.
There is an tattered old cliché of a saying in football that 'these things even themselves out over a season.' Arsenal didn't have to wait long for such justice: they should've been given a penalty at Old Trafford just a couple of days later when Darren Fletcher brutally fouled Andrei Arshavin in the box at the Stretford End.

Finally, with the season about to kick off this weekend for thousands of Sunday footballers around the county, just a quick good luck to every one of them.
As regular readers of these notes will know, I have carved out a stellar (cough) career in Sunday morning football but it is no more.
After my wife and I had our second child last spring I made the decision that last season would be my final one. Let the lie-ins commence...