WHO'D have thought MotoGP – that's motorbike racing for those who get their sporting knowledge from terrestrial TV and newspapers – would be interesting?

Well it is this weekend. Why? Because there's some good, old-fashioned serious rivalry involved.

It all kicked off in the last race a couple of weeks ago when superstar Valentino Rossi and his young rival for top billing, Marc Marquez, got into something of a spat that went from Italian Rossi accusing Marquez of helping another rider to the latter crashing out of the race and Rossi's foot alleged to have been the reason why.

This weekend sees the world title go to the wire and Rossi may have to start at the back of the field as punishment.

That could mean he has to pass Marquez along the way, something the Spaniard will definitely not want to let happen.

And that all adds up to a prospect even someone as apathetic towards motor sport as me would be interested in watching for nothing spices up sport like serious bitter rivalry.

It is the one thing that guarantees people get interested in something they normally wouldn't be.

Take the right mess that's been going on in local cricket over the last year which has seen the creation of a Greater Manchester League killing off one Bolton league and forcing the other to fight to survive.

As someone who's been right in the middle of the story it's safe to say there's not a lot of love lost between Manchester and Bolton on this issue and some of our stories on it have been read by thousands of readers on our website rather than hundreds who typically read local cricket tales on it.

Sport was invented so rival groups in ancient Greek times could test their strength, speed and power against each other in another way other than killing each other in battles.

Without rivalry sport is just games.

That's why Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett were the biggest sporting names of their heyday in athletics, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov actually made chess interesting to the masses, Bjorn Borg was seen as a hero and John McEnroe as a villain when they ruled tennis, and why boxing was the biggest sport in the world by a million miles when Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought.