I still love the moment when the floodlights come on

Action from Coventry's Butts Park Arena
on Saturday.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm about the Rugby World Cup final, there was no shortage of sport to interest me over the weekend.

Indeed there was a rare treat on offer. When we lived in Kincardineshire in the 1970s my father used to take me to see Montrose FC, our nearest professional football club - usually evening matches because he played rugby on a Saturday afternoon. I look back fondly on winter nights standing on the terrace with the ground illuminated by floodlights.

While I always look out for their results on a Saturday and often watch match highlights on Montrose FCTV, I have been deprived of opportunities to see them in the last 47 years since we moved to Hertfordshire. Admittedly when Rangers hit a spot of bother a few years ago and were demoted to Division Two, both their away games at Links Park were shown on Sky TV. I feared, though, that the day might never come again. Yet there, on the BBC Alba schedule for last Saturday, was Montrose v Hamilton Academical. 

This would normally have been the highlight of my sporting weekend, indeed maybe my sporting year. But I had tickets to be elsewhere, in the city of my birth, watching Coventry Rugby Club v Caldy. 'Cov' were my second great sporting enthusiasm - when we visited my grandparents in Coventry I would occasionally get to see a game at their old Coundon Road ground. Cov were one of a relatively small number of rugby clubs with floodlights installed at their ground and I always looked forward to that moment in an afternoon game in winter when the lights came on in the gloaming.

Back in those days both Cov and Montrose were on something of a high, the former one of the giants of the game with a team full of internationals, the latter for all that they were a part-time club in a small town finished one spot off promotion to the Scottish Premier League in 1976.

I've always had this worry that it was when I started supporting them that things began to go wrong. Since then both have endured more lows than highs, Cov nearly going out of business twice and having a long stint in the third tier of English rugby, Montrose coming within 90 minutes of dropping out of the Scottish leagues altogether.

For both clubs, though, things have been going better in recent seasons. Montrose have climbed back up to Scottish League One. Cov finished third in the English Championship and even beat the mighty Saracens (albeit shorn of their star internationals) in a cup game earlier this season.

In the end, it was no bad thing to be at Coventry's Butts Park Arena on Saturday rather than in front of the TV. After a sluggish start, Cov went on to an impressive win, whereas Montrose lost out 3-0 to a full-time professional Hamilton side.

A 4pm kick-off for the Cov game meant this was the first weekend of the season where the floodlights were switched on at half-time and somehow for me this remains a magical moment. It also brings back memories of my father and maternal grandfather who first took me to see live sport, but who are no longer here.