Nickie Muir: Sport? I deeply don't care

Nickie Muir.

You'd never get this in bog-snorkelling.

One of my favourite sports, mostly because no one but the Welsh could come up with the idea of snorkelling down drainage canals in swamps for competitive fun, bog-snorkelling really is the model for all modern sport. It's egalitarian. Here in the Far North there are still some wetlands left after all the swamp kauri has been taken out, it's not sexist or segregated - no gender divisions, and most importantly there has never been a case of drug fuelled victory in any bog-snorkelling event.

Nope, there has never been a bog-snorkelling doping scandal. Although there is a twisted part of me that regrets that.

I don't really get what the fuss is all about with some Serbian tennis player and his backing vocalists in the tennis world saying things like men should be paid trillionity times more than women for professional sport because they're better to watch or that women should drop to their knees and thank men for "carrying" the sport for them.

I don't get it mostly because I deeply, madly, passionately really don't care about sport. Call me unpatriotic and uninvolved - because it's true. One of my favourite pastimes during rugby world cups when people are writhing in agony on the floor of my life over some random's groin injury is to use questions like: "Who's Dan Carter again?" I only wish that the newspapers and 6pm news would leave space for actual news to make the above question a genuine one.

Once, I served Richie McCaw a coffee only to have my cafe swamped by 15-year-old school girls who arrived mysteriously, like a flock of migratory birds (how do they navigate towards famous rugby players? "Twitter! Duh!!) and I'd told them to go back to school or I'd call their dean if they kept swooning all over the place, they exclaimed: "But it's Richie McCaw!" "What? That guy that sells garages on TV?"

The group groaning suggested dumbstruck disbelief and genuine pain - which was what I was going for. That same week I fan-girled Joy Cowley and gave her a free breakfast (it's all about priorities and values). I once fan-girled Helen Clark after a university speech on development and the millennial goals for women. I know. We were both speechless and embarrassed.

My point is that mostly I don't care about the pay gap in sport because we as women are our own worst enemies. We continue to support male sportsmen by watching them and being interested in them, rather than take an avid interest in what women are doing and use our corporate contacts and influence to work towards sponsoring them or supporting them.

Don't believe me? Name as many All Blacks as you can. Now name the Silver Ferns. What about the Black Ferns? Who are our top horsewomen? Name some of our yachtswomen. Mmmm. Thought so.