SOMEONE asked me the other day what is the most frustrating sport to play?

To me, it is the sports that require the most obvious technical skill. The kind of skill that you could not possibly match without devoting your life to years of practice - although you don't realise such until you try for yourself.

Sports like rugby and football require masses of technical ability.

But when playing rugby league as a kid, for example, I believed that one of the numerous 10-metre chargeover tries I scored was just as good as anything Les Boyd produced in Wire colours.

And wellying the football to score from the halfway line in the school playground matched anything that David Beckham had to offer in the years to follow.

That's kids for you.

However, I was always left scratching my head when attempting to shine on the snooker table at a similar young age. Trying to get in position for a colour after potting my first red an hour after starting was pretty frustrating.

And it was the same on the golf course, watching my ball fly off into the trees after several attempts that resulted in missing the ball on the tee completely. So much time would end up being wasted searching for a missing wayward ball.

Darts is another one, and my parents will tell you there were as many holes in the bedroom wallpaper as there were in the dart board when I fancied myself as Eric Bristow.

Yet, in any of those, one day I would think I was having a good run and getting the hang of it, then the next I would be the world's worst.

So it wasn't a confidence issue, more one of consistency and concentration.

There's no doubt you could also be driven to madness by sitting on the bank of a canal or lake all day long if you do not get a single bite from a fish, but maybe plenty from the native gnats.

And boxing's surely just a case of getting your punches on the nose, isn't it? No, you'd soon get fed up if you fail to get your defensive guard correct and end up on the canvas more times than the amount of punches you land on an opponent.

Hitting the target in archery would be a mint feeling if only I could find the strength and poise to fire the bow in the first place.

So for me, it's those sports that are made to look easy by the top stars on television but prove to be ridiculously difficult when you have a try yourself.

A colleague of mine certainly learnt the hard way when he found out skiing is not as simple as it looks. Emergency rescue from a French mountain and weeks off work with ligament damage was a nasty experience.

I've no plans to learn a similar lesson and for such reasons you should take your practice sessions seriously if you fancy life as a jockey or Formula One racing driver.