Last weekend, whilst sitting in a pub in my home borough of Barnet, I had an argument.  An advert for Sky’s coverage of the Ryder Cup had popped up on the lovely widescreen HD plasma television that was nestled in the corner of my otherwise archaic watering hole.  I squealed in excitement.  The Ryder Cup starts next week!  My companion emitted a rather guttural noise of disgust.  ‘Who cares?’ she asked.  ‘Who cares?  Its golf and that’s not even exciting’.  Well.  She was very very wrong.  But the thing that really got me going was her asking ‘who cares?’  To me that is a question that moves beyond the boundaries of one particular sport.  She is asking whether it genuinely matters or not who wins a sporting contest – and that itself is questioning the very essence of sport.

No sport can be worthy of the name unless there is a winner and a loser.  It is that drive to be the best, to be better than your opposition which is at the heart of every sporting contest.  In our increasingly PC kind and cuddly world we see more and more examples of how competition is being sucked out of our live: the removal of sports days from some primary schools, the notion of ‘reserved success’ rather than failure.  This cannot be healthy.  Sport teaches us how to lose and how to deal with disappointment better than any other activity: it means that a sudden failure is not the crushing blow that it may otherwise be.  Removing competition from people’s lives is an impossibility; sport offers a way of understanding that competition.  It is more than a medium for fitness (its current social standing) and indeed more than a source of camaraderie (although this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of sporting life); it is so very important in that it is us at our most basic: the simple desire to see the bloke at the other side of the rugby field and be better than him.

Once this competition has been tapped into, then sport becomes more than a simple game.  It is a social experiment: it is how we deal with drive, with desire, with disappointment.  I will watch the Ryder Cup because I am watching some of the best golfers compete: I will see their mad yearning to win and I will see how they cope with this.  It is a study in human behaviour.  Watching Kevin Pietersen, the once so cock-sure Kevin Pietersen, walk out to bat these days is fascinating.  You can see his desire to succeed.  You can see his disappointment when he does not.  And most fascinating of all you can see how important it is for him – he needs to win to maintain how he sees himself.  The nagging self doubt in the corner of his mind intensifies with every failure he makes and this human drama is being played out right there in front of us, with only grating soundtrack of the inane thoughts of Michael Holding and Ian Botham to serve as a distraction.

My companion was unimpressed.  I have waffled, she said.  Probably – my pub economics tends to turn into a bit of monologue not really knowing where it’s going.  ‘Why does it matter if this Pietersen bloke wins or not?  You’ve already said losing teaches you more.  If sport is about winning and losing, how come everyone gets so upset about losing?  It’s part of it.  I certainly don’t care who wins the golf thing.  Why should I care?’

It is true losing is part of sport.  A sport has a winner and loser – it cannot have two winners.  So why is winning so important, especially for us armchair fans?  Why is it so important to us that Europe wins the Ryder Cup in Wales this week?  Why is it so important to us that the Lions win when they go down to the Southern Hemisphere?  When playing, winning can be seen as a reward for effort: it is a vindication of the work that you have put in, of the training sessions you have attended and of all the bumps and bruises you have received. So why, when I went and watched my beloved Saracens this Sunday, was I so desperate for them to beat Northampton?  I had put no work in.  Winning can be seen as a reward for effort, but the only effort I put in that day was sitting in a slightly warm car driving to Watford listening to Five Live.

Winning is important, I feel, because following a sportsman or sports team is like putting an extension of yourself onto the field.  These people are doing everything that you wished you could do, and that forms a pretty strong emotional attachment.  Every young Liverpool fan wishes he could play for Liverpool, every young racing fan wishes he could be Jensen Button, every young spin bowlers wishes he could be Shane Warne.  The emotional bond between sportsmen and sports fans – that idolisation and imitation - is thus not at all irrational.  The joy felt when Leeds score by the overweight bloke in the Elland Road stand who is enjoying a chicken balti pie and who has never kicked a ball in his life is real – and it exists because he wishes he could be there doing that, he has extended himself onto that field.  Fans therefore harness their competitive energy for a team - it was my pre-game banter with a misjudged Saints fan, my desire for Saracens to win, my emotional input into every tackle, and when they won its almost as if I have won.

Therefore when it is all square moving up towards that last green come the singles on Sunday, watch the Ryder Cup.  Watch the sweat, the nervous looks, the shallow breathing.  Look for their desire to beat the Americans, look for their fear of failure and their determination to prevail.  Those Europeans are extensions of you.  It definitely matters whether or not they win.