IF you are like me and the Winter Olympics have more or less been passing you by, don’t worry, we are not alone.

Trying to start up a conversation about double skeleton gold medallist Lizzy Yarnold or bronze medal winner Laura Deas will earn you nothing more than a few blank looks or something along the lines of: “Oh, yes, isn’t that that the girl who who drives a tea tray?”

That’s the trouble with the winter games. They are not only a poor relation to the glamour of the summer Olympics, they are not really our thing.

On top of that, they are always held thousands of miles away, where it has to be freezing cold and there are rows of mountains. And, whisper this, isn’t it all seen as rather elitist? Or too put it more kindly, exclusive?

Even with Clare Balding at the helm, the BBC seem to be treating the whole event as a fortnight’s jolly, with commentators who believe that the louder they shout the more they will be heard.

The problem for Lizzy and the rest of the GB team is that, for most British TV viewers, the Winter Olympics are known for the memorable Torvill and Dean and their Bolero and a ski jumper who wasn’t very good at it 30 years ago, Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards.

That’s nobody’s fault. A look at the medals table after the weekend events showed that Britain were down in 16th place (one gold, three bronze), while the top five were all countries where they get endless snow and have spectacular mountain ranges.

Holland, who lie third behind Norway and Germany but ahead of Canada and the USA, are the exception (no mountains, but Germany is rather handy).

For most Brits, the only time they think about skiing is when they are planning a winter holiday to the Alpine slopes. Skiing is a hobby to fill a midwinter break.

And where is your nearest curling rink to practice your hurling stones at the house and brushing up on your brushing?

Ice Queen Lizzy will have travelled a long way to perfect her 85 miles an hour downhill dash on a sled, and as for those flying, spinning snowboarders… well the best of luck trying to find somewhere to give that a whirl.

So 16th place is not to be sneezed at under the circumstances.

These islands were just not built to be the home of leading winter sports stars. And, in any case, doesn’t the whole country grind to a halt at the first signs of a heavy snowfall. That should tell us all about our idea of winter.

WHEN it comes to beating themselves up over not very much, nobody does it better than rugby league people.

They were at it again following three matches in Australia over the weekend.

Two of them were friendlies – or exhibition games, to use the marketing term – and the other was for the World Club Challenge, ostensibly to decide the best team in the world.

The point is that Australian clubs won all three against Leeds, Wigan and Hull, and all at once the forums are filled with doom and gloom about the state of Super League.

Why? Everybody already knew that Melbourne Storm, who beat Leeds 38-4, were already the best team in the world by a country mile and regularly beat Australia’s others by a similar score. Nothing to see there, then.

Wigan and Hull were beaten by South Sydney and St George Dragons, so three games, three defeats.

Cast your mind back a year when two games were played over here. Warrington beat Brisbane Broncos 27-18, while in the main event Wigan beat Australian champions Cronulla Sharks 22-6.

Nobody stood on the rooftops near the DW Stadium shouting that Wigan’s win was anything more than a good night’s work.

These matches are money-raisers, a chance for the two leading rugby league-playing nations to come together and compare notes. Nothing more.

Yet some fans cannot stop themselves from looking for deeper meanings and finding that the British game is on the road to oblivion.

If they wanted some truly meaningful competition, they should have been at Craven Park on Sunday when Barrow Raiders took on Leigh Centurions.

The celebrations by the Barrow players after an unexpected 24-20 win over the competition’s big guns were more than enough to forget all about three meaningless defeats in Australia.

Brilliant stuff and a credit to coach Paul Cresta and his team.

ALASTAIR Campbell, part-time spin doctor and full-time Burnley fan, has a new book out. And to give sales a boost, he used his guest spot in a daily newspaper to tell us that we are wrong if we think all footballers are thick and greedy.

The former spokesman for Tony Blair praises Burnley captain and goalkeeper Tom Heaton, former Burnley midfielder Joey Barton and co-author Paul Fletcher (former Burnley and now accomplished after-dinner speaker) as three leading examples of footballers who have more between their ears than they are given credit for.

He may well be right, so perhaps not all footballers are thick. Just some, so it is probably just as well that he did not include the West Brom quartet of Jonny Evans, Gareth Barry, Jake Livermore and Boaz Myhill on his list.

Their alleged curfew-breaking escapade with a taxi while on a training break in Barcelona was hardly the act of a group of players with membership of Mensa on their bucket lists.

A few days later, two of them were in the team knocked out of the FA Cup by Southampton, the club is bottom of the Premier League and their manager is under increasing pressure to hang on to his job.