DRIVING through Stirling when I saw a sign that said: "This way to the Battle of Bannockburn." I put the foot down, not wanting to miss any of it.

Sadly it seemed all over by the time the Ford Fiasco made it to the top of Whins of Milton, wheezing like a medieval charger burdened by Friar Tuck and the 1314 branch of Weightwatchers.

This was a pity because I am a sucker for the big event. In fact, I am also a sucker for a plumbing company, but that is another story and one, frankly, that leaves a nasty taste in the month.

Anyway, back to big events. The triumph of the modern sporting world has been to organise events, say they are very big, and find that large chunks of the world agree with that proposition. The Americans are as good as this as they are at invading countries with oil reserves. That is, very good indeed.

The baseball season, for example, runs for 163 gazillion individual matches but each one is promoted as if it was as exclusive as an Epsom Derby contested only by polka-dotted unicorns.

It is the same with the Superbowl. It is trumpeted as if it defines an era. There is one every year. It consists of large men running into each other while another man throws a ball as if it was a grenade and he was invading a country with oil reserves. Yet, I confess, I love it and watch as if it means something beyond the brutally physically and the oddly artistic.

The hype is not restricted to the other side of the Atlantic. The English Premier League is so mediocre is should be sponsored by So-So Soap, the bathtime accessory that leaves a tidemark. The standard is laughably poor in relation to the money spent on players. Yet everyone seems to lap it up as if it was nectar nestling at the bottom of a very chocolately cup.

The Olympics are brilliant at this sort of marketing. I walked around to Lords in 2012 and saw queues around the block, attracted by news that extra tickets had just been released.

What was this special event? A UFC bout between Alan Carr and Graeme Norton? An ultimate bake-off between Vinnie Jones and Danny Dyer? A mass singalong with an alive and well Frank Sinatra who has been discovered after an impromptu appearance at a carry-out in Crouch End?

No, dear reader, it was the archery. Now I would only buy a ticket for archery if it was mandatory that David Cameron was a target. Archery, after all, is just darts on steroids. It is as spectator sport in the same way that a Jennifer Aniston romcom is a watchable film.

But London 2012 sold the events with the unspoken allure that being at an event made one part of the ultimate Olympic experience. And it worked. Londoners became so energised, so invigorated at the Olympics, I saw two of them taking to each other on the Tube.

This "experience" module was used to good effect at the Commonwealth Games and is conspicuous at the Davis Cup in Dalmarnock. There was a time when tennis in Scotland would not attract as many people as would stare at a particularly exotic piece of roadkill.

Yet more than 20,000 people have stumped up for a ticket for a competition that no one really understands beyond the result on the day. Results in the Davis Cup involve moving up and down a series of zones, like a sort of sporting Tomb Raider. For example, if Team GB beats the USA this weekend they will move into the Tomb of Seth group and be in strong contention for the Amulet of Horus.

But it will entrance and entertain because there is a genuine sporting story being played out in front of our peepers. There will be the simple, comprehensible narrative of one team seeking to beat another.

But there is more in Dalmarnock this weekend, though. The Davis Cup brings home Scotland's greatest sportsman and places him in the role of superhero. Again.

There is massive hype at the Emirates - and not all of it created by this witterer- but there is also an undeniable truth. It is big sport but with a substantial story. There may be those of Caledonian extraction who do not have a grasp of the precise, fascinating nuances of tennis - and this observer is one of them - but most Scots love sport and all of them have an appreciation of what constitutes greatness.

This appreciation is given a tang because one knows that while greatness is substantial, unmistakeable it is also fleeting. Part of watching an era-defining sportsman or woman is to appreciate those Kenny Burns' lines

But pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white--then melts for ever

Well, it was one of thae Burns. The point is that the spectator has to witness and appreciate greatness when they can. And that can be in Dalmarnock as well as Bannockburn.

It is why I am scunnered about missing the battle of 1314 particularly as Robert the Bruce was never quite the same gain.