DRIVING home on Saturday evening, following my spell at the lap-top screen, I was listening to the talking heads on BBC Radio Scotland's football phone-in. These included my old mucker Graham "Britney" Spiers.
Before the programme was taken-over by Billy Paranoid of Larkhall and Sean Putupon of Croy, I had reached home, but, I was not impressed by the level of debate - hardly surprising, since Keith "Wealth of the radar" Jackson was another of the "experts".
Quite how Jackson has reached the exalted status he enjoys, and how he has managed to remain there, amazes me. But, hey, how the Daily Ranger/Rhebel works has always been a mystery to me.
Any way, nobody was prepared to admit to the single point which has long held back Scottish football and continues to do so - the dire level of intellectual ability in the board rooms and corridors of power in Scottish football.
Football has long been the People's Game in Scotland. Football lifted the likes of Busby, Shankly and Stein - not to mention the likes of Gallacher, James and McMullan out of the mines; it took George Young and Ale Ferguson out of the shipyards. It gave not-so-gifted miners, engineers and other common men a lift after a week of toil, it inspired.
However, there has never been a pattern to how football is governed in Scotland. Like government of the people, it has always been all about the interests of those in power, rather than the common good.
Right now, for as long as the fans turn their ire on the managers, the directors who preside over the decline in Scottish football, get an easy ride. This is helped by an over-romanticised vision of what Scottish football once was.
We haven't been "a great footballing nation" in my life time, and I am one of the Baby Boomer generation of post-war new-borns. Sure, we've had our good teams, more often our bad. Our best World Cup performance remains ninth place in 1974, that's fact.
On Saturday night, Britney was asserting that: "Scotland used to beat Belgium regularly, back in the 70s and 80s."
Pish. Keith Jackson waxed lyrical about Kenny Dalglish's goal against Belgium in Brussels. Aye, we lost that one too. Just as Belgium have always qualified for a big tournament when drawn with Scotland in a qualifying group.
We were better than the Belgians in the late 1940s - since when, they have overtaken us, as have the Dutch, whom we once beat fairly regularly; the Norwegians - ditto, also the Danes and the USA.
The three failing football teams in Europe are us, the Austrians and the Hungarians - this is fact. Of course, these three nations have a common problem, richer neighbours.
But, if the will is there, and the people with vision are in place at Hampden and at the clubs, we can rise again. But, that's the problem - they are not and, until we get rid of the self-servers and the half-wits - we really are doomed, doomed ah tell ye.
And, for as long as the likes of Britney and off the radar wealth ignore the problem, recovery will not happen.
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