Some people attach a certain value to tranquility and fair-mindedness in defeat, and consider the hissy-fit a kind of moral failing — unseemly, arrogant and disrespectful. This more or less sums up my usual response to the professional footballer who throws his toys out the pram. But for reasons I can’t fully explain, there’s something more endearing about the surfer who behaves in the same way — perhaps because it contradicts so directly the stereotype of the laid-back surfer, and the idea that surfing and competition are incompatible; or perhaps because football, by contrast, is already saturated with such incidents to the point of nausea.

Perhaps it’s just that footballers tend to lack the inventiveness of a Freddy P, who during a particularly slow heat at the Quik Pro 2015 chose to express his displeasure with the natural world by deliberately surfing into a rock — an eminently reasonable response.