Opinion

It was impossible to tear your eyes from this revival of an old show in Mount Florida from the moment Scott Brown started throwing shade while going down the line at the pre-match handshakes. That was about the only time Celtic managed to go toe-to-toe with Rangers in an impossibly one-sided opening hour.

I Googled “sport” and “after-dinner” and “speech” the other day but not because I’m about to get on my feet. The world doesn’t need to hear about my muddy-field endeavours – lost every single game of P7 football, thrashed 88-0 at rugby by Fettes College. Honestly, no one’s interested in this.

The Gammell-Murray report on future governance and structures in and for Scottish rugby requires, and indeed deserves, mature consideration, not an off-the-cuff immediate reaction. So, for the moment, I’ll turn to another report which was published earlier this week by the IRFU.

Now that Duncan Ferguson has finally been put in charge of the Everton first team, albeit temporarily, it’s natural to wonder what Jim McLean might think of this once unlikely scenario.

A trope as well as a team was slain when Scott Brown 
produced one of his man-possessed moments to drag Celtic
to an added-time victory 
over Hamilton on Wednesday night.

You’d have thought that someone who takes a stand against racism would be against discrimination in all its forms. After all, it’s just as bad to judge someone on their gender or sexuality as the colour of their skin, right?

If Lord of the Flies was the fictional representation of how leaving a group of lads to their own devices can lead to division and instability, Hearts’ bickering at Ibrox on Sunday was the footballing version of that

It was almost exactly a year ago that Scottish Golf announced plans for an all-singing, all-dancing App that was hailed as a “game-changer that could potentially bring in millions” by the chief executive, Andrew McKinlay.

The BBC, in case you hadn’t noticed, are big on diversity right now. They love a bit of inclusivity. So when it was announced that 2019’s Sports Personality of the Year would be staged in Aberdeen I wondered if a North-East worthy might be sneaked onto the shortlist without too many people thinking this was contrived and smacked of tokenism.

Last weekend’s Heineken match between Munster and Racing 92 at Thomond Park was sheer delight, up there with the Japan-Scotland game. It was so good that neutrals at least may judge that a draw was the right result, as indeed might have been the case if Scotland had scored that try near the end in Tokyo.

During his brief and unfulfilling spell as a Celtic player in 2011, which singularly failed to match the hype which accompanied it, Freddie Ljungberg would wear Arsenal gloves during training sessions at Lennoxtown.

“If you’re at a club that’s like a Celtic or a Rangers, the fans expect you to win trophies and if you don’t do that, you will get the sack.”

For the first time in 22 years, Scotland’s name is on the guest list when the draw is made for a major tournament finals.

The Scottish football landscape is changing. One by one, it seems, the big beasts are bowing out. The baton is being passed on.

It was a season that put Scotland back on the European Tour map, not only bringing title triumphs but also hope - no, make that confidence - about a bright future for the Saltire-standard bearers on the ever- more-challenging circuit.

Last month when Tottenham Hotspur were struggling, and just before they really started to struggle, Mauricio Pochettino voiced his concern about having a docusoap camera in his face quite a lot of the time. It got in the way, it compromised him, it made him feel more like a producer than a coach. “I hope there is a happy ending,” he said of the series Made in Tottenham. Well, when it airs there won’t be, not for him.

One of the most vivid memories of last year’s trip to Israel to watch Scotland was just how down on their side the local media were.