Team work

That seems to be that then, the final episode of the best sporting year since, well, 1977 at least. That was another jubilee year, but Ginny taking tea with the Queen, Red Rum at the National, Liverpool winning the European Cup and England the Ashes is still no match for 2012. This is a year to get all Max Boyce about: I was there, that sort of thing. You don’t have to be literal about it, you simply had to be alive and own a television. The edge of your seat was the only place to be. And now we can bask in a warm European glow in the wake of the 2012 Ryder Cup.

Apart from the storage room at the EU headquarters in Brussels, it would be hard to imagine more Europe flags in the same place as on the final green at Medinah on Sunday. And apart from in the Vatican, it is hard to imagine a gathering of men with a more frequently stated belief in an interventionist afterlife than the European team.