Thank you, Hadyn Green. It’s not often that a staffer (albeit freelance) gets to thank a contributor to a sports site, but in this case my hat is raised to Mr Green for writing what is for me the best article I have read since this site started two months ago.

Being a sports fanatic (cricket and football), I take it for granted that I will get my weekend fix of sports winter and summer, but I very rarely think why I am nervously pacing up and down waiting for the scores or getting up at some absurd hour to watch a cricket match at the other side of the world. Hadyn’s piece has got my juices flowing to the extent that I am throwing the hat I have raised into the ring as to why I follow sport.

I remember my late Dad (also a sports nut) telling me that he always got a feeling of excitement in his stomach just before the curtain came up at the theatre (he loved a bit of culture, too). Although I am a fan of Leeds United, I love watching any football and do not care about the score, and I can recall three incidents in sport which gave me the same feeling as Dad.

The first was in 1983 or 1984; Spurs were at home to Liverpool in the League Cup (I don’t remember the round). White Hart Lane was packed, the terraces were heaving. It was the usual cold winter’s night and as the Liverpool players came into view in the tunnel before they took the field, I experienced one of those glowing moments. It’s difficult to describe but it was the combination of expectancy and seeing something unique. The combination of cold, floodlights, a packed stadium and seeing the best team in England in their famous all-red strip gleaming in the light was quite irresistible. Interestingly, the game was nothing special - Spurs won 1-0, I think - but that moment has always stayed with me.

The second incident was at Lord’s in 1980. The great Viv Richards walked out to bat and from his first ball thumped a glorious four. The innings itself was nothing short of sensational and I was left wondering afterwards if this innings (one of many Test hundreds he scored and probably no more special than any of the others), was as a result of genius or hours and hours of practice.

The third was the most interesting. Greyhounding across America in 1978, I went to a ball game at Shea Stadium. I may as well have been reading about astrophysics from what I understood of the rules but I loved the icons associated with the game - the tobacco chewing, the coaches squaring up, the seventh-inning stretch, and will always remember a feeling I had towards the end of the game. As the pitcher raised his arm, there was a moment where I realised that an almost infinite number of possibilities could ensue from that one throw. The magic of sport - surely this is better than watching scripted lines at the theatre or listening to a written music score.

Sport is far more important in our lives than we realise. Most of us live a fairly hum-drum existence; we get up, go to work, go home etc. Sport gives us a peg to hang our emotions on. It gives us a form of identity with the team or individual we support. It makes us happy and sad and it is the best party ice-breaker known. This was my argument against Sven in the World Cup. What he failed to realise, in playing a bunch of boring square-pass also-rans, was that once every four years we want to have a bit of pride in our national team, and the way we play is far more important than the result. So why didn’t he give a run-out to the exciting youngster Theo Walcott and provide us with a bit of pleasure? Why were we not allowed to enjoy the experience?

There are, of course, many people who take a completely opposite view on the importance of sport, saying it is not important like politics and social issues of the day. This view is often espoused by sad people who are unfortunate enough to have no interests at all.

I rest my case by drawing on Sir Donald Bradman. Now I never got to see him bat, but my old Dad did twice at Headingley in Tests. Bradman was not just a genius whose Test average will never be broken, but as Charles Williams pointed out in his seminal book Don Bradman, An Australian Hero, the great man almost single-handedly restored the pride of a nation beset by economic and political problems.

I have heard similar things said about Muhammad Ali and Pele, although in their cases, I am not as convinced. What makes Bradman even more alluring is that his rise to prominence was almost unnoticed – he came from a very ordinary lower-middle-class family and through a combination of genius and hard work rose to be the greatest sportsman of all time (in my view). It is this innocuous, almost incidental call to glory which is the drug that pumps through our veins.

We hope the next fix of Wayne Rooney, Lance Armstrong, John McEnroe, Olga Korbut, to name a few of hundreds, will restore our bodies. We need more, so much more that we get up at two in the morning to watch a bloke deliver a small red ball from 22 yards and a bloke with a piece of wood hit it. Thank you Hadyn, I’d forgotten how important it all is.