The perfect pitch?

The drama of a sporting occasion may seem like ideal material for lively theatre, but combining the two can lead to disaster. Jonathan Myerson picks out the very few successful productions ? and offers advice to those facing relegation

Why does the World Cup always give theatre producers the jitters? Are they petrified that the incessant matches (even when broadcast at breakfast) will decimate West End audiences? Or do they just assume that sport on television must be echoed by sport on stage? This year's World Cup spawned Alone it Stands at the Duchess, a revival of An Evening with Gary Lineker at the Riverside Studios, Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads at the National and, ever the 51st State, the Donmar Warehouse brings us Take me Out, a gay baseball play.

Well, why not? At first glance, sport and theatre seem obvious bedfellows and sports commentators are forever borrowing their metaphors from theatre. Hardly surprising – sport is inherently dramatic, relying on exactly the same conflicts and unities that a good play demands.

But why does it so rarely pay dividends when sport is actually the subject matter of the play? Why don't we get more plays that have us cheering them down to the finishing line?

Both sport and theatre require that we suspend disbelief, but they seem to do so in such crucially different ways that they inevitably clash. In sport, the players are our champions, our defenders and heroes. But in theatre, the characters are ordinary, life-size: they are us. Modern theatre seeks to minimise its characters to make them credible, while sport demands that we enlarge them. Witness the sportsman's foibles and he is no longer the godlike figure we need him to be. The truth is that the failings that make someone an interesting, complex and believable stage character are exactly the traits that make them an unbelievable sportsman.

So, with almost four years to go until the next World Cup, I offer up this rule book for all wannabe sports playwrights and producers...

Spectators are more interesting than players

Not surprisingly in this kingdom of armchair sportsmen, this category covers almost every English football play – in fact, you score 100 bonus points if you can think of an English play about actual players.

Team captain has to be An Evening With Gary Lineker, which exploits the ups and downs of a televised match, allowing characters to work out their own private dramas. It may be a semi-final famous for its tears and histrionics (1990 v Germany), but the play's authors Chris England and Arthur Smith still expect their audience to know the match intimately. And, more to the point, to care.

Vice-captain is David Farr's Elton John's Glasses, another lost-cause play, this time Watford's 1984 visit to the FA Cup Final and more agoraphobics stuck indoors.

Though nowadays we may rely on television to provide our shared sporting experience, remember that in 1977 there was still the undimmed national glory of the Derby. Howard Brenton's Epsom Downs is simply a panoramic picture of a (class-ridden, naturally) nation on its day off, with characters ranging from lords to horses.

Final warning: What all these plays have in common is that the result is immaterial or already well-known, and the sportsmen are distant or merely iconic. Success probability: high enough.

When two tribes go to war

Sport is war made safe, theatre is tragedy made someone else's. But when theatre moves into the tribal aspects of sport it is playing with fire. The granddaddy must be Peter Terson's Sixties football musical Zigger Zagger. But it's hard to make fictional tribes seem real and the "City" of Terson's play never really comes alive.

America can boast genuine tribalism and so Howard Sackler's Great White Hope is the obvious starting point. Written in the Sixties, it features a thinly-disguised version of Jack Johnson, who became the first black heavyweight champion in 1908. It's a classic story of racial disharmony, with "Jack Jefferson" hounded out for a relationship with a white woman and eventually forced to throw a fight in Cuba. Last revived at the Tricycle Theatre, the politics comes alive but the boxing rarely.

Too violent to ever become a favourite with youth theatres, Ray Williams' Sing Yer Heart Out for the Ladsprobably deserves to inherit Zigger Zagger's mantle. It suffers from the same schematisation, however – using the football to elicit the racial tensions – and the cast is packed with types, from BNP Activist to Black Brit with Union Flag on his Cheeks. But look on the bright side, at least it isn't The Beautiful Game.

Final warning: Sport divides us. It may be an easy way to trigger a heated debate but the trouble with sport is that it's always one side or the other, it's not supposed to have grey areas. And modern drama thrives on grey areas. Success probability: Everything to play for.

Amateurs: part one, amateurs being amateur

These are core English plays, bringing us face to face with our athletic ineptitude. Kingpin here is Richard Harris's Outside Edge, now a repertory staple, with the chattering pavilion the focus rather than the cricket pitch. Roger, the team captain yearns to beat British Railways Maintenance Division Yeading East but his obstacles are, much more dramatically, romantic rather than sporting. And Harris gets it exactly right – it's purely comic, the match result is immaterial and cricket provides just the right stop-start dynamic to pivot the comedic flow. Hardly surprising that it spawned a spin-off television series.

Final warning: John Godber attempted most of the same tricks for On the Piste, but somehow skiing (too cold? too lonely?) doesn't have the same potential as cricket. Success probability: Keep it comic and maybe we'll have lunch.

Amateurs part two: amateurs getting good

You know the one – local team, no chance of winning and then (suddenly!) everything starts to change. John Godber's Up 'n' Under has the pub rugby team take on a ridiculous challenge to beat the champs. You know they're going to win because the script keeps telling you they won't.

The latest Irish twist on the theme is Alone it Stands, the true story of one of the least expected victories in the history of sport. (Interesting how English plays enjoy famous defeats, but other nations always choose famous victories.) In 1978, no one expected bottom-of-league Munster to beat New Zealand, the unstoppable world champions of Rugby Union. By delving into the stories behind the story, it becomes another show, the sport almost incidental.

But if you're a mere ball boy how do you ever get to win the title? Well, you can't. But in David Edgar's 1976 Ball Boys they do the next best thing and simply garrotte Sven Svenson, the Swedish champ.

Final warning: we all want to get behind a David when he's faced with a Goliath, but the result is always anti-climactic. Success probability: We'll call you.

It's just another day at the office

Playwrights will always love the microcosmic worlds thrown up by any closed society – time, then, to dive into David Storey's The Changing Room. Here, the tensions of Rugby League are merely the vehicle for some dangerous, male competitiveness. Take me Out, currently at the Donmar, turns this testosterofest on its head when the star baseball player of Richard Greenberg's play publicly announces his homosexuality. The pitcher on the opposing side is a Southern bigot and the result is a death on the diamond.

Final warning: if sport is the metaphor, your audience has to understand the intricacies of the game. Most don't and those who do see right through the inaccuracies. Success probability: In the relegation zone.

Danger: men at work

Depictions of professional sporting life are hell on earth. This Hall of Shame boasts Clifford Odets' Golden Boy, the everyday story of a boy who has to choose between boxing and violin playing. And Louise Page's Golden Girls, about the humdrum world of athletics – I never knew it could be so humdrum. Success Probability: Think British hopes at the Winter Olympics.

Very final warning

Sport may seem like the perfect metaphor for theatre, but it's simply too perfect.