Anyone who has trained really hard for a sport has experienced the “Joy of Effort”.

The first few days, even weeks, of training are usually a painful grind, requiring such grim mental application as to be largely miserable.

Then as skills, fitness and achievement improve the whole effort becomes more and more enjoyable.

Weight training for strength, as you slowly increase the burden; sprint training as you slowly improve the times; stamina training as you gradually increase the ability to sustain the effort; skill training as you master control and learn or invent new techniques; team training as a team gradually becomes a unit. There is no better feeling than the satisfaction of achieving improvement as a result of hard work.

Of course training for sport, after the initial launch from zero to a reasonable level, becomes a series of plateaux; a step from level to level. Each level takes a little bit more specialised effort and the amount of progress is less and less the higher you get. Nevertheless the feeling of achievement – yes, the joy – which accompanies each improvement makes the effort worthwhile.

Then when the pinnacle is reached, the joy is in the effort to maintain that standard.

Rugby, the world’s fastest growing sport, for which the Maltese are now showing such affinity and ability, is a game that can be played at varying levels of effort.

This partly because there is such social camaraderie off the field after the matches that it is possible to get a great kick out of the social side of the sport.

However, it is so much better and more enjoyable if players seek to improve and maintain their fitness levels. For a start, the fitter the players, the less likely to suffer nagging injuries, and like everything, if you have played your best, to your physical limit, even if you are beaten there is a satisfaction.

Yes there is a joy in effort, in personal effort and in team effort, which makes effort in sport, especially rugby, so worthwhile.

Mike Turner played Rugby in UK at high level and then refereed in France for some years.