In this household, as defined in the Here’s Some Water Now Pay For It Act of 2014, there are two adults. I mention this only because I’m filling in the Irish Water form applying for waterboarding status with my other hand as I write this. Apart from an interest in water, we also have something else in common. We both watch sport on the television.
We have strict categories of sports to watch and they can be roughly divided into five. Feel free to have your own list. Mine isn’t obligatory.
The first, lowest on the totem pole (I can still say totem pole, right? It’s not Indianist or anything, is it?) is sport on television as pure background as we are reading something far more interesting and just can’t be bothered to find the zapper and turn the thing off.
This might include conference league football, the horse of the year show and county cricket. Sometimes I think the latest repeat of “Celebrity Antique Chef Road Trip” in which someone you have never heard of is forced to cook something you will never eat, in a location that they would never normally visit is more interesting than county cricket. But I may be wrong.
The second category is sport where you quite like to know the result but don’t actually want to suffer having to sit there and watch the thing. We just sort of flick over, from time to time, from reading the subtitles on the latest Scandinavian crime series featuring someone miserable in a sweater and/or leather jacket to see what the score is.
This would include tennis matches involving Andy Murray, Kildare GAA matches, and American and European tour golf events not mentioned in categories four and five.
Audience participation
The third category actually involves audience participation. It is matches with which we have no genetic, political or cultural link but that we find quite interesting nonetheless. This includes all Arsenal matches, as you never know what is going to happen, and that All-Ireland hurling final between someone or other, help me out here . . . Tipperary and Mayo two weekends ago? Sorry I had been playing golf that morning and was very,very sleepy at the time. But even a pair of ignorami like me and Her Indoors, appreciated that one.
Fourthly we get the set piece obligatory watches: the British Open, small bits of Wimbledon, rugby internationals, Irish world cup one-day cricket matches, Irish football matches (excluding friendlies), the Olympics, some horse races, the Masters, the Tour de France and so on.
These are events that we look forward to although they sometimes disappoint a bit. But that’s okay because, just like the 49A bus, there will be another one along in a minute.
And then we come to the top of the tree (which is only an uncarved totem pole really).
These are the sporting events that are so ingrained into your DNA that your very health and well being depends upon the outcome. I tend to watch these from the same place that I used to watch scary television programmes when I was just an infant. From behind the sofa (it is a different sofa, I have come up in the world since 1959).
Sweat and effort
Events such as . . . you have probably guessed what I am going to say now, given the week that’s in it. And you’re right. Moments such as the First Division play-off final in 2014 when Leyton Orient turned victory into defeat with the very last kick of the game after a season of sweat and effort (and that was just me watching each match on BBC Live Score), extra-time and penalties. You missed it. I have it recorded. Pop round any time.
And I have every other Leyton Orient match that has been on the telly – surprisingly, there aren’t many. Did you see them beat Peterborough the other week in the Johnson’s Paint Trophy. Wow. That was a game. Her Indoors, bizarrely, demurs from this categorization. She is a Leeds supporter. Someone has to be.
Oh, and the Ryder Cup. Yes, the Ryder Cup. We both watch that from behind the sofa. I break out into a sweat just thinking about it. And it's soon, isn't it? That would explain the extra order of betablockers that were delivered today.
A history of the Ryder
I became aware of the Ryder Cup when I was the aforementioned child. I did start playing golf when I was about eight years old, after all. I remember stories of people such as
Dai Rees
,
Bernard Hunt
,
Peter Butler
,
Henry Cotton
, Christy O’Connor and
Peter Alliss
going off on a boat to be walloped by the Americans on a regular basis.
The Ryder Cup really took off as a Herculean sports event thanks to Tony Jacklin who, after winning the US Open in a field somewhere near Minneapolis in 1970, brought a whole new level of commitment to the biannual slaughter and turned the thing around. And he brought a necessary level of arrogance, not sure that is the right word, that you need in sport at that level.
It was the sort of self-belief that Seve had in spades and, of course, it was Seve and the Europeans that eventually turned the Ryder Cup into the extraordinary event it is now.
It will be interesting to see if the Scots, fresh from getting excited about being Scottish, or British, depending on how they voted (see the news pages for more up to date information – there is probably a jolly good cartoon on the subject in the op-ed page . . . or not) will manage to transform themselves swiftly into fanatical Europeans for three days in Gleneagles.
My whole attention will be on every single match. Except at 3pm on Saturday 27th when I will be worrying over Leyton Orient versus Rochdale for a couple of hours, and not without cause. But I expect you knew that.
