The team's the theme for off-screen stars

By far the finest sporting work of the year now sweeping swiftly towards its yuletide climax was performed beyond the peering eye of the television camera. This, in itself, is an achievement because there are few places into which that particular instrument doesn't stick its snout. We shall be reminded of its ubiquity tonight when the BBC TV's Sports Review of 1997 is screened at 8pm.

Why we have to endure this orgy of retrospection before the year has run its full length is a mystery of long standing. Not only have we yet to come to the proper reminiscence season but there was still plenty of time for someone to register a worthy performance before the viewers votes for Sports Personality of the Year were required to be in at the start of December.

But these old groans never get us anywhere and are just a little less futile than searching the previous 11 months for an obvious candidate for the title. It has not been a vintage year for individual performances. I voted for Greg Rusedski in the sports writers' poll for the impressive contribution he has made to the revival of British tennis but there was scant challenge from elsewhere. This lack of solo accomplishment, however, was more than compensated for by exciting successes at team level.

The Lions in South Africa, the European Ryder Cup team in Spain, the England rugby side last weekend and the smooth qualification for the 1998 World Cup by the England football team offered a selection of performances that were all the more thrilling because of their capacity to shower us with surprise.

On another page, my colleague Ian Ridley commends the claims of Manchester United's manager Alex Ferguson to the title of sports personality of the year. He is unlikely to get it. BBC voters vote on what they see and while the results of good management are clearly visible the act and performance of management is not; unless you count aggressive chewing as a sign of profound thinking. Ferguson's feat is still in the forming and what he is about to achieve will probably qualify him as a man of the decade rather than a mere year. But the creation of United's superiority has taken place progressively, over a long period, and no part of it has taken us unawares. The other team triumphs during the year carried powerful elements of shock to heighten the excitement. There's nothing more exhilarating in sport than the unexpected.

Both the long-term and the short-term demonstration of coaching and managerial inspiration of this magnitude should be acknowledged tonight, but it will be understandable if it isn't. Not even television, not even Sky, can take us inside a player's brain and show how the self-belief of a supposedly inferior team can be massaged into match-winning mode.

Perhaps, if we had more faith, we would be less shocked when our underdogs transformed themselves into heroes. But it would have taken optimism to a new height if we had expected the Lions to beat the Springboks in one Test, let alone win the series. The build-up of this passionate belief began with the manager Fran Cotton and translated into a tactical and creative force by the coaches Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer. To me, theirs was the performance of the year.

Europe's victory in the Ryder Cup was by no means as big a surprise but most of the world - I have written proof that I can be excluded from that majority - expected the US team to swagger away with it. The European captain, Seve Ballesteros, was denounced as a bloody nuisance by several of his team but his constant coercion had the effect of urging the home side to a famous victory. It was leadership at its best.

England's performance against New Zealand at Twickenham was probably the most unheralded shock of the year. It would rank even above that of the Lions but for the fact that it was a one-off and they didn't actually win. Balanced against the fearful apprehension of what New Zealand's winning margin would be, however, it was justly regarded as a great success. It was even more so, considering the short duration that England's coach, Clive Woodward, has been in charge. He has quickly succeeded in games against the fiercest opposition the world can provide. A far less than satisfactory draw against Australia, a sound beating from the All Blacks at Old Trafford and another from South Africa at Twickenham would have wrecked the newly laid plans of any coach.

The strength of conviction that first allowed him to face the final New Zealand game with what amounted to far more than blind defiance was admirable enough but to have the ability to transmit that force of character into players who must have been deeply doubtful that they had the resources to resist the rout the rest of us expected was astonishing.

He had the imaginative help of the former rugby league coach Phil Larder in this enterprise and there is no doubting the important part Larder played in channelling this belief into patterns of play efficient enough to stop the All Blacks. But Woodward must take much of the credit for that part of the operation, too, because it was hardly an obvious appointment and what made it more dangerous was that Woodward ran the risk of chilling the marrow of the RFU higher ranks by bringing a league man within the ramparts of HQ.

Woodward's transformation of the England team has brought benefit not only to England but the Five Nations' Championship. Had New Zealand left England clad in the same tatters that adorned France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland after the exertions of the past month, the traditional winter confrontation between them would have been seriously devalued. Suddenly, England have bridged the chasm and have presented their old foes with a new standard at which to aim. Whether or not they can aspire that high matters less than the restoration of a wealth of meaning to the championship.

It overshadowed all other sporting exploits of 1997 as did the Lions and Ferguson and, indeed, those who fashioned Barnsley's arrival in the Premiership and Glamorgan's first Championship for 29 years.

Nothing compliments sport better than the example it sets to anyone facing a problem with a less than confident heart. Sometimes there are years when the best practitioners of that art are to be found nowhere near the centre of the television screen. We're just finishing one.

AS the owner of half a horse, I can sympathise with Sheikh Mohammed Maktoum's threat to pull his multi-million-pound string of horses out of British stables and take them abroad if the Government and bookmakers don't put back into prize-money some of the riches they take from the sport. I'd go with him but I don't think my horse travels well - at least, not over a racecourse he doesn't. However, I have great faith in the establishment of Jim Neville of Newport, Gwent, where the animal is now resting and attempting the British hay-eating record in readiness for next spring.

If the Sheikh does depart, will he bring horses back to enter the Derby, and all our other great races that boost a horse's value, or will he be too proud to abandon us only to pop back for the rich pickings? I think he ought to stay and tough it out like the rest of us.