Aidan Smith: Credit cards for a new interest in SPL

I’M trying to be a good parent, to bring up my boy right but, just recently, I was beginning to despair. It’s a horrible feeling to think you might be losing your child – to English football, European glamour teams, Lionel Messi, Robin Van Persie, packed stadia, oohs and aahs every few minutes, glistening TV presentation. . . Everything, indeed, that the game in Scotland lacks.

The laddie is five and already football mad but he’s only witnessed one Scottish match in the raw (still too young, I reckon) and, therefore, his regular fix is via the goggle box.

Obviously, I’ve tried to sit him down in front of SPL games, but they don’t always hold his attention. The telly packaging isn’t seductive although you could argue that’s not what we’re like as people – and a bloody good thing, too. But, sometimes, the fitba isn’t very come-hither either. The lack of atmosphere inside the grounds doesn’t help and small boys will notice things like the great spreads of plastic, popped-up emptiness. “Dad, who’s bit is it?” mine will ask, meaning which is the home team. I let him work this out himself, through all that helpfully colour-coded and helpfully deserted seating. Then comes the wounding inquiry: “Dad, why’s no one there?”

Long story, but maybe we can leave it for the time being, because last week brought a dramatic breakthrough. Archie rushed through from his bedroom and uttered words which I think will be preserved for posterity in our house: “Dad, who’s Ross Tokely?” Honestly, if he’d said “Dad, I love you” I don’t think I could have been happier.

The reason for this sudden interest in Ross County’s hulking heavy-lifter at right back was purely and simply down to a new football-card collecting wheeze.

The SPL didn’t previously hold Archie’s attention because there was nothing related to it which he could actually caress – and shuffle, and flick through, and take out of the £4.99 plastic folder, and put back in, take out again and all the other things five-year-olds like to do when cultivating a nice little obsession that will, hopefully, last a lifetime. Now there is.

I must say I don’t remember football cards in my boyhood, at least not Scottish ones, when I would have been the right age for them. A scan of eBay would seem to bear this out. The trade in cards is from earlier and slightly later, so I narrowly missed out on the chance to be seduced by kenspeckle portraits of Drew Jarvie, Henry Hall and Wilson Hoggan, as well as ferocious characters like Davie Robb and Pat McCluskey and Willie McVie being momentarily stunned by a camera.

All those burst-sofa hairstyles and ingenious combovers and gap-toothed grins (as opposed to gaps in the stands) – I just know I would have got hooked on football cards after furiously collecting the ones given free with bubblegum telling the story of the American Civil War. My bundle went everywhere with me, even to football matches and, when I didn’t quite have the attention span for the entire 90 minutes, I would thumb through them, always stopping to marvel at the gore when horses threw their Confederate riders on to deadly wooden spikes.

Getting back to football. . . I was obliged to collect the 1970 England World Cup squad in imitation silver coins which came with a tank of Esso petrol. Similarly, the club badges in tin foil produced by Shell were all from English teams. The Scottish game in the late 1960s and early 1970s was in pretty good health and the marketing men missed a trick.

Now it’s struggling and needs all the help it can get. Or, more optimistically, there’s a communal desire among those left in the SPL to ensure this season is lively, intriguing and nothing like the write-off the doom-mongers were predicting.

Maybe that’s why grown men in the office were behaving like kids last week, grabbing the samples of the new cards given free with a Scottish tabloid and uttering words they probably never thought would pass their lips: “I’ll swap you three Colin Nishes for a Niall McGinn.”

There’s a lot that’s wrong with the new cards – no cartoons on the reverse, and the same naff lightning-flash backdrop for every player.

But that’s just an old fan talking. My son’s collecting, he’s already an expert on all crests, and he really covets that big Highland heifer.