Strike Up The Band - Naw, Haud That Tune

THE Gerswhins' tune - 'Strike Up The Band' is one of the great Hollywood musical numbers, a foot-tapping, feel-good number, which has prefaced generations of UCLA Bruins American football and basketball games.

Right now the Tartan Army might well be feeling like singing: "Let the drums roll out, let the trumpet call, while the people shout: "Strike up the band".

After all, Scotland has just risen 24 places in the FIFA world rankings, from position 74 to position 50.

However, to adopt a weel-kent Glasgow expression: haud me back, from joining-in the joyous outpouring. Yes, any improvement is to be welcomed, but, that one unexpected victory can have such a positive effect on our self-worth and status, merely, to me, underlines the absurdity of the FIFA world rankings.

Let's be honest here, Europe - the UEFA confederation of UEFA is the power-house of world football. Apart from the two South American giants, Argentine and Brazil, every country which is any country in global football is in Europe.

Look at the top of the FIFA rankings, only Columbia - currently enjoying a good run, and the Argentinians and Brazilians have managed to infiltrate an otherwise all-European top ten.

We Scots should ignore the FIFA rankings, study instead the UEFA ones, where the story isn't worth celebrating. For, in European terms, we are ranked 27th out of the 53 member countries.

This means, we are still in the bottom half of the continental rankings; or, to put it in a Scottish context - we are Rangers - still somewhat below where we think we should be, miles away from the top table which we regard as our rightful place.

Rangers will try to buy their way back to the top table in Scotland. This should work, but that isn't guaranteed. Scotland cannot buy their way back to the top table in European and World football. In fact, if offered odds on whether Rangers would be back in European club competition before Scotland was back in either of the two big national competition finals, notwithstanding the ludicrous suggestion of a 24-team European Championships finals, I would still be wary about which bet to take.

More-so now the implications of the SPL take-over of the SFL are starting to come to the surface.

By all means, let's celebrate this jump in the rankings, however, we are still 27th of 53 in Europe and, more-damningly, fourth out of five in the British Isles. That isn't acceptable, but, I don't see things changing soon.