I did the supermarket shop yesterday afternoon, this morning the gas bill arrived and on the way into work I filled my car with diesel.

Never mind writing for the Yorkshire Post, if this keeps up I'll be hawking the Big Issue soon, albeit a little more imaginatively than some of the sellers on the streets of Leeds.

If it ever comes to that, I've already worked out my sales patter.
Rather than stand there shouting the name of the magazine, I'll stop strangers with a friendly greeting.

Me: "Knock, knock.."
Stranger: "Who's there?"
Me: "Biggish."
Stranger: "Biggish who?"
Me: "Certainly, that'll be two pounds please."

I reckon I could sell all of a dozen copies before I either end up on Sunday night at the London Palladium (is it still on?) or in Leeds General Infirmary.

At least I know I won't be short of company when I get to casualty, a destination which has become all too familiar to rugby league players during a season which has featured unprecedented numbers of injuries.

Only last weekend the derby between Leeds and Bradford saw West Yorkshire's two biggest clubs missing 12 senior players through injury in Ryan Hall, Clinton Toopi, Jamie Jones-Buchanan, Ryan Bailey, Paul Deacon, David Solomona, Glenn Morrison, Sam Burgess, Chris Nero, Chris Feather, Tame Tupou and Matt James.

Elsewhere Hull and Wakefield have often struggled to raise competitive teams during 2008, while most other clubs have had to contend with crippling injury problems at various stages of the year.

When the sport switched to summer rugby in 1996 there was some concern that players would fall victim to injuries through playing on hard grounds, fears which have never been realised.

Indeed, for the first 10 years of Super League there was no noticeable increase in injuries and it is only in the last two or three seasons that increasing numbers of players have faced lengthy spells on the sidelines with ruptured knee ligaments, shattered shoulders and weak hamstrings.

No official research has yet been carried out as to why injuries are so endemic among the game's top athletes although many theories abound, the most plausible being that players are now 'too fit' to play within the rules of a sport which features so many brutal collisions.

The overwhelming majority of players have known nothing other than full-time professionalism and the long, hard sessions in the gym, aided by dietary supplements, have created bodies which are cruelly unforgiving in the rough and tumble of a regular Super League game.

The solution lies not in tinkering with training schedules but in making some adjustment to the rules of the game, in particular the rule which keeps teams 10 metres apart at the play-the-ball.

That distance allows players to build up destructive speed and has a suffocating effect on the skill levels of playmakers: closing the gap could only make half-backs and hookers more creative, reduce the number of contact injuries and prolong the careers of those who play the game at the highest level.

The welfare of its players is the biggest single issue facing the sport with the only consolation from doing nothing being the fact that Super League should at least buck the trend of spiralling inflation that is blighting the economy.

For if fans are to be consistently denied the pleasure of watching as many top-class players as they have been in 2008, the knock-on effect is that clubs are going to find it impossible to justify any increase in season ticket prices in future years.