The Union Flag flies proudly at the Super Bowl XLIV Media Centre here in Port Everglades.

Well, to be more accurate, there are two A4 flags on sticks taped to the corners of the BBC table on Radio Row. But at least they announce that some British media organizations are still interested in the biggest annual sporting event in the world, give or take a Champions League final.

It used to be that members of AFWAB [the American Football Writers’ Association of Britain] under the enlightened leadership of Christopher Davies, their distinguished president, would gather at a restaurant on the Wednesday or Thursday of Super Bowl week, and it would have to be a pretty big table.

They would discuss the year gone, talk about the forthcoming game, and be humiliated as their (usually laughable) pre-season tips for division winners and Super Bowl finalists were read out. Food and drink were, I assure you, secondary considerations at this annual gathering of the UK’s American Football clans.

That custom was last observed in Houston in 2004. Now, two British writers meeting at the coffee machine probably counts as the annual AFWAB get-together.

And that is downright mysterious, especially given that the NFL is now an annual presence in Britain. In October, the San Francisco 49ers will play the Denver Broncos at Wembley, which is expected to be effectively sold out for the fourth successive year of regular-season NFL games on British soil.

The NFL obviously believe that there is a rich vein of British interest in their product ready to be mined, but it seems that some areas of the British media don’t.

The publication that one stalwart member worked for has gone out of business since the golden days, but the main problem is that fewer newspapers are sending reporters to the Super Bowl. The paper that once had four representatives at a game has no-one here this year.

Last year, one British daily newspaper printed a piece on the Super Bowl from an award-winning writer, datelined Tampa Bay. The only problem was that none of the other British writers could remember seeing him all week, he wasn’t in the press seats for the game, and the NFL confirmed that he hadn’t been accredited for either the game or any of the press conferences.

It’s not as if this year’s game is short of interest. For goodness’ sake, the head coach of one of the teams [Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints] once played in Britain, where he was the quarterback of the Leicester Panthers and took the first steps in his coaching career.

Maybe the NFL’s overseas expansion itself is the problem. If a paper does one big splash a year on a sport other than one of the British big three, it looks a lot better for the departmental expenses sheet if it involves sending reporters to team headquarters in the Surrey countryside and a stadium somewhere up the Jubilee Line rather than booking flights to California or Louisiana.

It’s not as if the dwindling band of British journalists is feeling a little lonely. It’s that we feel that this is an event worth reporting and that readers of some papers are missing out.

The answer could be for the NFL to fly a group of writers over to Dallas-Fort Worth next year (or, better still, sports editors), just to show them what a big event this truly is, and rekindle some of the enthusiasm for the Super Bowl that existed a decade ago.

And don’t worry about eating out. The surviving members of AFWAB who have been carrying the flag throughout will book the table.