TODAY is International Women's Day, so, my daughters would never forgive me, if I did not take the opportunity to praise the success of Scottish Women's Football.
The male blazer-wearers along Hampden's top-floor "corridors of power have had almost 150-years in which to bugger-up the game in Scotland, to the extent, they have become practiced in this particular art.
The women have not had nearly as long, also, having noticed how well/badly, the men running the SFA had done, they were free to do things differently - to the extent, Women's Football in Scotland, while still very much the gender poor relation, is doing an awful lot better than the male equivalent.
Also, over the last couple of generations of footballers, it might be argued that Scotland's women have out-performed the men. Let's face it, Scotland has not produced a genuinely "world-class" male footballer since Kenny Dalglish hung-up his boots 30-years ago.
Julie Fleeting - scored at better than a goal a game in over 100 internationals
In that same period Rose Reilly, Julie Fleeting and now Kim Little have all been rated as genuinely "world-class", while several other Scottish women have been or are ranked only slightly beneath the level of these three Superstars of the Women's game. Not since Dalgleish and Graeme Souness have we had male players ranked that highly.
Rose Reilly - won a World Cup with Italy and in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame
Kim Little - A world-class woman footballer of today, for Scotland and Team GB
Our Women's team is rated more-highly than our Men's. That elusive first appearance in a the final tournament in a major championships certainly seems close during their current European Championship qualifying campaign. I would not bet against our women strutting their stuff on the biggest stage before our men.
However, they do all this with the minimum of money, media attention and support. The Tartan Army largely ignores their achievements, and, our major papers devote more time to foreign minority sports than they do to our women footballers.
We bemoan the pathetic efforts of our men's teams in the Chamions League and Europa League qualifiers, and in the early stages of the latter tournament, and virtually ignore the fact Glasgow City FC, operating on a shoe string in comparison to the full-time English women's teams, are seeded above many of these well-funded English sides in Europe.
City regularly punch above their weight, but, any praise they get in the Scottish media is faint.
Scottish Women's Football is a success. Today, on International Women's Day, we should celebrate that success, and, take note. Now, they have a proven winner as their patron, in First Minister Nicol Sturgeon, I can see the Scottish Women's footballers going from strength to strength in the years ahead.
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