WE can only wonder if someone at Hampden said: "book him George", inviting President Peat to make the call, once the SFA board decided Stewart Regan was the man to follow Smudger into the Chief Executive's role within the National Stadium's corridors of power.
I cannot see Peat having the wit to use The Sweeney's other iconic line - for younger readers, the heading - when inviting the new man to quit Leeds for Glasgow. But, how badly I wish they had appointed Jack and not Stewart Regan to lead Scottish football's administrative.
Regan (John Thaw) and his henchman George Carter (Dennis Waterman) didn't mess about when it came to sorting out the bad guys, they simply went in there, fists and feet flying and did the business.
Given the Hampden hierarchy sometimes gives the impression of being composed of small-time hoodlums, who think they are Mafioso, maybe our Mr Regan should adopt his small screen namesake's approach.
However, Stewart Regan ought to know what he's getting into. He's coming from Yorkshire County Cricket Club, a body which, with its in-fighting between the Bradford, Barnsley and Sheffield Leagues, the carping and moaning from the side lines of former Gods of its game and by the constant presence around the big matches of still walking ghosts of the past, very closely resembles Scottish football.
Some Northern Englanders say a Yorkshireman is simply a Scot with a less-sunny disposition. Clearly both races have much in common. You know, Stewart Regan just might have a chance, but he'll need all the luck in the world to succeed.
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IT'S not luck Celtic will need if they are to get past SC Braga into the Champions League proper - it's more like a miracle.
I wouldn't have backed the Lisbon Lions to overturn a three-goal deficit in a second leag in Europe, which is not to say they couldn't have done it. But this current lot - no chance.
I watched last night's game via computer: Celtic were dire. I fear another early exit from Europe.
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THE above said, our teams are fighting on an uneven pitch when it comes to European games. It has been obvious for a good number of years now that asking our clubs to curtail their close season, then immediately begin with games in the harsher environment of European football is asking too much.
We need to change the pattern of our season, as well as the pattern of our play. Pace and power are nothing in Europe without technique and we simply haven't had the technique for years.
In the first 30 years of European football, when we regularly got teams into the last eight or better in the European tournaments, our lack of technique was more than compensated for by our power and pace. But, gradually, the Europeans learned how to counter the British bonuses - without diluting their technical superiority. We still paid insufficient attention to getting players who were comfortable on the ball; we've continued to be deficient in this and we are falling further and further behind.
When are we going to waken up.
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TO leave football for a spell. I've long considered Mark Lewis Francis a failure. At 18 and 19 he looked like a future star, but between bad luck with injuries, bad decisions, believing the hype and not working hard enough, he has failed to become the world-beater he might have been.
But, throughout it all, British Athletics stuck by him for years, before, losing patience and cutting his lottery funding.
This woke him up. Lindford Christie (not my favourite athlete ever and of course a convicted drugs cheat) then had a word and MLF got his reward this week with a European silver medal.
Of course, he's still a long way behind true World Class - Boit, Gay and Powell, and a wee bit behind the new French kid on the block - but he has a chance of redemption.
We've had the odd young Scottish player who looked, at 18, like a potential world beater - but, nothing ever became of them. Football dropped them too quickly, they didn't work hard enough to get back and we don't seem to have the icons still in the game capable of kicking some sense into these failures and bringing them back.
There is also apparently, no mechanism within a team game for sorting out errant individuals. Apparently the individual sports: athletics, tennis, golf, boxing etc in this country have better support networks for the participants than football.
Given the money which is in the game here, there is something wrong there. And until we put it right, we will struggle.
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