It strikes me that a big thing is made of the Europeans having a system in place, one that has clearly worked well over the past 30 years. Given that, is it difficult for you as the next captain to come in and bring something different to the process?

I’d like to come in and bring nothing new. In a perfect world, you do as Monty did in 2010. We’ve had good captions and bad captains. We’ve had good things happen and bad things. But it does seem that – starting with Monty – we have gathered a lot of good stuff together.

Probably the most pivotal moment in Ryder Cup history is Mark James not playing his rookies until the singles in 1999. Now, everybody knows that you must get your guys out on the course. Everybody knows that now. Mark tried what he tried, but it failed. Now, getting everyone playing before the singles is 101 on the play-sheet. The singles are really worth twice the points in a way.

Look, methods have to be tried. But it does seem that Monty really got things together in 2010. Then McGinley collated it all. Monty did it with passion. I don’t think he was that organised. But he didn’t do anything wrong. He convinced his team that every decision was a team decision and not his decision. When they really were his (laughs).

McGinley then put everything together. As a vice-captain, I didn’t learn much under Paul because everything was seamless. To be fair, everything he called turned out perfectly. I could see it all working.

I actually learned a lot more under Darren (Clarke) in 2016. Things went wrong there, often spectacularly. There was so much catching-up to do that week. We were losing. We were up against it on the golf course.

Harrington at the peak of his playing career with the Claret Jug and Wanamaker Trophy. PHOTO: Getty Images.

The thing with Danny Willett’s brother didn’t help.

That’s what kicked it all off. We were struggling before we started. Then we lost the first four matches.

Should we have sent Danny out and given two fingers to everyone? Should we have sent him out there because we didn’t care? He was the man. He was the Masters Champion. We could have told him to lead. That’s all hindsight, but I do wonder if we shouldn’t have told him to ‘go get ‘em, prove that you’re the best player we’ve got.’

There was a problem with all that though. Danny didn’t play well in practice. But many guys do that. Practice is useless. Guys hit too many shots. All kinds of things. So yes, we should have backed him and sent him out first. Then, if he didn’t perform, we could have sat him down. That would have been less of a blow. But he could have led the team. He could have been that guy.

And that was the problem right from the beginning that week. But the good thing was that I learned a lot that week, and so did Thomas Bjørn. We saw everything behind the scenes. Thomas really applied himself well when he was captain in Paris. He did a great job. We lost the first morning but there was no wondering what to do at that point. We were prepared for it. We were prepared for pressure. We were prepared for the ‘choke-point.’ There is always one of those, when you have to be ready to deal with anything.

We knew all that from what happened to Darren in 2016. There was mayhem at that stage. So, in France we knew what to do, when and where. We were ready, whether it was good, bad or indifferent. Thomas did a tremendous job of being ready for anything and everything.

What can you bring to the job with all that already in place?

I have my notes written. And I’ve picked up on things from all my Ryder Cups. More from my vice-captaincies. You see a lot more from the sidelines than you ever do as a player. Yes, a lot of what I do will be the same as what has gone before. But I have a couple of little things that I’ve seen … just a few little pointers up my sleeve.

You do need to bring your own personality to the job …

Yes. Every captain has to do that. Every captain has to be all things to all players. I have to know – and this is one of the harder aspects, something I need to work on – who needs an arm round his shoulders, who needs to be pushed out in front, who needs to be held in reserve and who needs a kick up the backside. The captain has to manage the players. He has to manage the coaches. He has to manage the wives. Everyone is part of the team.

One thing I was worried about is the fact that there was talk of giving me more picks. Think about this. Players who wouldn’t have been picked would be friends of players who did get picked. Can you imagine the internal strife if guys are thinking I should have picked someone who would have made a great partner for the guy I did?

But I’m not sure you can ever avoid that completely, especially if I had 24 guys to choose from. Lots of people don’t get picked, even when they legitimately could be. There are always a few guys you could make cases for. But if you give me eight picks, that number rises and that would be another thing to manage.

We saw something in another Ryder Cup that was really interesting. Paul McGinley told me this. The pressure he was put under because two of his vice-captains were 13th and 14th in line for picks. They were standing over the guys who did get picked. One of the vice-captains even gave a guy who was picked a lesson on the course. It was one thing for them to be there, but they should not have been anywhere near the guys picked ahead of them.

Paul felt intimidated by all of that. He was worried that his vice-captains might be biased against those he had preferred. It would have been easy for them to report back that player X was playing crap in practice, even if they were only sub-consciously biased. So, there are things to learn from. In every match we see little things that haven’t come up before and it’s my job to manage all that.