An' forrit, tho Ah canna see - Ah guess and fear

I WRITE this on the morning of Scotland's opening match in our 2018 World Cup campaign, against Malta in Valletta.

As I type these words, on that small, valiant, sun-kissed George Cross island – the Scotland squad will be breakfasting, no doubt ingesting the news as to whether they are starting, on the bench, or in the stand and therefore able to slap on the factor 50 and maintain that expensively-purchased summer sun tan.

Elsewhere, the foot soldiers of the Tartan Army will be enjoying their mainly liquid breakfasts, donning their match-day tartan finery and, like those of us left back in barracks, glancing forward, tho' at what we canny see, guessing and fearing.

Let's be honest, if Scotland doesn't make the Maltese cross by beating them, we are even worse than we fear we are. If we lose, Hell, even if we only draw, we might as well discard the lot of them and start again – because, if we cannot beat Malta, we have no hope of reaching Russia.

This is what the rule of the Hampden “blazers” has brought us. Not that Scotland has been really good at football this side of World War II. In fact, a graph of our international decline since 1945 goes downhill faster than BBC Scotland's Brian Taylor and Robbie Coltraine might manage if they were to be Scotland's two-man bobsleigh team at the next Winter Olympics.

Ominously, we have not yet bottomed-out. It is scary.

MEANWHILE, what concerns the stenographers of our glorious Fourth Football Estate – why a run-of-the-mill SPFL fixture, coming up next weekend, between two sides from Glasgow. You know what makes me laugh, all those Sellick fans, insisting Ragners are deid and the opponents they face next week are a new team – well these same fans are getting awfy excited and hysterical about this wee team.

By the way, if Level Five is indeed handling Rangers' pr – we can only assume Succulent Lamb Chop Traynor has lost it totally. Allowing that picture of the team, with a flute band, on the park at Windsor Park yesterday will go down as one of the great pr own goals.

Aye, sectarianism sells right enough.

I WAS in the opulence of the Signet Library, within the old Parliament House, next door to St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh on Thursday night.

I was there for the launch of 'NUTMEG' the new Scottish football periodical.

PLEASE – BUY THIS PUBLICATION, MAKE IT A SUCCESS, UNIQUELY IT TREATS SCOTTISH FOOTBALL AS AN ADULT INTEREST AND THUS BREAKS THE MOULD.

Nutmeg deserves to succeed. Any way, one of the High Heid Yins in the Signet Library did a wee introductory spiel about the room and its history. All around us were leather-bound books, the thinking of the finest Scottish legal minds since 1532.

So, I went for a swatch around, but, I was unable to locate that seminal work from the currently longest-serving member of the College of Advocates. That book is entitled: 'The Donald Finlay Songbook'. I gather it's out on loan.