Winning isn’t everything. But losing isn’t anything. So say the collective sports’ fans of the world. Not counting cricket fans, because they love a draw on occasion, and Formula One fans who love a crash beyond all else.

But sometimes winning simply isn’t enough. Sometimes you just need to gloat.

Because beating Cardiff 1-nil away is a great and hard-fought result for which your team (ok, MY team) gets awarded the 3 points for victory and everyone goes home happy. Except the Cardiff fans but they don’t count. Most of them can’t count.

But other victories have an added sweetness that no number of goals, tries or off-stumps can equate to. Because its about who you play, not how you play. And to deny such a thing is to employ a neutrality in sport which removes passion and love and renders everything sterile and just reduces it to a few emotionless numbers.

I can’t live my life in such a way. Not when we’re winning anyway, only in times of loss.

And yesterday was simply ‘the dream’. It started with the rugby. We (that’s the England ‘we’) played Australia. And although beating New Zealand would always be more significant, more important, more difficult, it simply doesn’t mean as much as beating Australia. Because New Zealand is a nice place full of lovely people. And…

It’s all about attitude. Not of the players, however important that might be. Its about the collective national attitude and the general feelings between the two nations concerned. And by not just beating Australia but by pretty much humiliating them with a second half performance that was breath-takingly outstanding, those poor Aussies had the smugness simply wiped off their faces. And put onto ours.

But that was the mere hors d’oeuvre for the main course when Chelsea came to play Spurs. Bringing their ‘unbeaten’ record with them. And their arrogance and their nasty, vicious fans and their manager. Who I reckon must be a Spurs fan. Because he took Chelsea’s most influential player, if not their best, N’golo Kante, who has just been given a new, 290,000 pound a week contract for being probably the best holding midfielder in the world, and played him in a new, untried and more peripheral position. Replacing him with some tosser with an equally funny name but about 10% of the talent, no pace and not much clue, for the Spurs attackers to flummox.

Would Kante have prevented Spurs from winning? Hard to say (thank gawd). But it certainly wouldn’t have looked so easy for my high pressing superstars to simply breeze up to the Chelsea goal again, and again, and again, leaving the seemingly hapless Chelsea defence in tatters. And never more so than ‘the best goal we never scored’ when Son played a 1-2 with Eriksen on the edge of their box, the latter floating the most exquisite chip over the heads of the Chelsea defence back to our Korean wizard. Who obviously hit the ball into the crowd, but that’s not the point. It was the style, the skill and the totally dominant class that impressed, almost as much as our missed opportunities to inflict even more damage on Chelsea’s ‘unbeaten’ record.

We (that’s the Spurs ‘we’) were brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Happy Sunday. And come on Bournemouth!!!!

A xxxx