Opinion

‘Will you ask Neil Lennon if he’d consent to Griffiths going non-contact until 26 March or shall I?’

He glowered at the ball like a B-movie baddie would his cowering rival, like a sadistic headmaster from equally long ago would the classroom irritant.

Conditions at Murrayfield were so appalling last week that it is tempting to say there is nothing to have been learned from the match. It certainly wasn’t a normal game of rugby. One might say that England just deserved their victory because they defended well and made fewer handling errors, and leave it there.

When Alex Dyer entered the media room at Rugby Park on Friday morning, he should have been anticipating the opportunity to wax lyrical about his 
Kilmarnock team’s fine recent form and an impressive midweek victory over Rangers.

Sometimes, improvement isn’t enough. Steven Gerrard has been brutally confronted with that truth amid the fall-out from Rangers 2-1 defeat at Kilmarnock on Wednesday night.

Thirteen seconds. That’s all it took Peter “PC” Brown to ready himself for just about the most famous Scotland kick in the long history of the Calcutta Cup.

It seems a little redundant to talk tactics and strategy
with an elephant in the room or, in Finn Russell’s case, an elephant not in the room. His revelation in a Sunday newspaper that he had zero relationship with Scotland boss Gregor Townsend despite working with him both at Glasgow and at international level for several years is revealing and depressing in equal measure.

We have a Hall of Fame in Scotland but we also have a Scullery of Deedle-Dawdling.

I don’t know how the players felt but it was hard work watching for the poor spectators in Murrayfield, especially those that found themselves in the wet seats on the lower tier.

Sporting a highly impressive keeker – it wasn’t one of our guys, honest – Lewis Ludlam squinted at the map through his one good eye and eventually found what he was looking for.

So long, Kirk Douglas, the last man standing from Hollywood’s golden age and the star of more than 80 movies, including the greatest-ever depiction of newspapermen at their most scurrilous, Ace in the Hole.

Jim Calder, Iain Paxton, David Leslie – Fin Calder, Derek White, John Jeffrey – the names of these back-rows ring loud and happily in the memory.

So farewell then, Kenny Miller. Shortly after starting out at The Scotsman in 1998, I saw two of the first goals he scored one wintry day at Ochilview.

It was only ever going to be a matter of time. On 14 February, eight years to the day after Rangers plunged into administration, comes what everyone, including Sir David Murray, must have feared was in the pipeline: Craig Whyte’s memoirs.

Scotland can still win the 2020 Six Nations championship. Losing your first game away from home and taking a losing bonus point from it is not terminal. Only one four-try bonus point was garnered from all the games last weekend and every team should take one against Italy. Lose a second game, home or away and you are not winning the title.

Here’s something to ponder. Could the European team for this year’s Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits be rookie-free. Unlikely, yes, but it’s a possibility after 17 counting events in the battle to make Padraig Harrington’s side for the trip to Wisconsin.

Yesterday’s earthquake in Paris complicates things for anyone looking ahead to next Saturday’s Calcutta Cup. Shorn of their main ball carriers in the forwards (Billy Vunapola) and the backs (Manu Tuilangi) England looked a little ordinary, unprepared for the speed and aggression of the French defence, now managed by the former Wales coach, Englishman Shaun Edwards.

To those with reason to curse the invention of square posts one ought to add Rob Rensenbrink. Saint Etienne’s complicated relationship with the old Hampden goalposts that prevented them becoming European champions is well known.