We counted them all out and, to be brutally frank, there weren't enough of them. The Europe Ryder Cup team stood ceremonially on the steps of their plane yesterday, bound for Kentucky with the hopes and dreams of a continent, etc, etc, and those viewers with only basic maths could work out that the team were some way light of the broadly advertised 12 players.

Five light, to be exact. There were only seven at Heathrow yesterday, plus a bizarrely unconcerned-looking Nick Faldo. Blast those newly tightened restrictions on baggage allowance. The airlines are absolutely merciless about it these days. You turn up so much as a kilogram over the advised limit and you are obliged to unpack the excess there and then and leave it behind.

And clearly, we assumed, somewhere behind the scenes yesterday morning we had missed the first big decision of the Faldo captaincy: to leave Ian Poulter, Paul Casey and three others in a plastic tray at check-in.

But no. Sky Sports News had Peter Staunton on the ground at Heathrow and when Ian Payne, in the studio, with a slight yelp in his voice, asked, 'Where's the rest of the team?', Staunton was able to point out that some of the players were based in the United States and would be joining up later. It wouldn't have been worth a golfer's while, Staunton said, to fly over to London in order to fly straight back out again.

Well, point taken, I suppose. But at the same time, this is the Ryder Cup we're talking about, which is to say, war. And what we were trying to produce here was a big, marrow-instilling, flag-heavy send-off for our boys on the eve of the battle, which etc, etc. Unity is everything on these occasions, isn't it? At any rate, when the fleet sailed for the Falkland Islands all those years ago, I don't recall much talk about people “making their own way there”.

Anyway, there was a promising early signal of Faldo's adaptability in the way that five Virgin air hostesses were instantly drafted to make up the shortfall on the aircraft steps. It comes down to who's available, in the end. Some of them could still figure in the four-balls if things don't go to plan.

You could tell the hostesses from the players because they weren't in the official Team Europe 2008 relaxed-fit travel-wear - a pale cream top worn under a brown suede blouson, which had the mildly unfortunate effect of making everyone look like Tommy Saxondale at a wedding. Apart from Miguel Ángel Jiménez, who just looked like Tommy Saxondale, full stop. “Very casual indeed,” Payne said. “I think that's how they like it,” Staunton surmised.

Payne was also keen to be reassured - as we all were - that the players would not be obliged to suffer any unnecessary privations during the long flight. Staunton was able to reassure him, up to a point. “There'll be a good service on board, no doubt about that,” he said.

He didn't elaborate, though. Maybe he didn't get the press release. Or maybe he did, but was too dignified to stoop to using it. No such qualms here, though, where we are happy to pass on the news that, on board this specially chartered Airbus A340-600, the players had access to “the longest fully flat bed in business class”. (One each, I think, rather than one between them.)

We can also report that, rather than hanging around in the Heathrow branch of Dixons for a couple of hours, the players would have been enjoying the facilities available in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse, where they could “enjoy a massage or haircut in the Cowshed Salon, play pool, and enjoy the Deli bar”. As Sky Sports are fond of saying, with regard to the Ryder Cup: “It's more than golf”.

Staunton, though, was hankering for the past. “It's not like the old days, is it, when they went on Concorde and it took them half the time?” A golden period, indeed. And invariably someone would choose a convenient moment during the flight to strike a ball the length of the aisle and have it declared the longest putt ever played (distance from one end of Concorde to the other, plus the 400 miles or so Concorde had travelled while the ball was rolling).

But aviation, alas, has changed, and so has golf. You can't get a can of shaving foam into the cabin these days, let alone a broom-handled putter. And nearly half the team make their own travelling arrangements anyway. Spoilsports.