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. Thanks for that, Seve.

Post Medinah, a blue flag with 12 stars — of course the precise number of players in a Ryder Cup team — looks so much better than the Cross of St George that we tried to fly over Poland and Ukraine. But what is it about Samuel Ryder’s little gold trophy that makes Europe gel, that allows players and fans to get wrapped in a flag that usually does nothing for harmony? After all, the fellowship of the 19th green doesn’t see Martin Kaymer as a European but as an honorary Surrey boy and doesn’t rejoice in European harmony any more than Lee Westwood sang the words to Ode to Joy at the opening ceremony.