Here's Tae Us - Wha's Like Us

WHA'S like us indeed. We Scots may be 'The Master Race' (says Alex Ferguson), 'The world's best small nation' (Jack McConnell), 'Ra Peepul' (followers of a certain Glasgow football club), 'The greatest nation God ever put breath intae' (anonymous).

Equally, we might be 'Whinging Jocks' (any one of hundreds of Daily Mail columnists/readers), 'Subsidy junkies' (any one of thousands of London media types), '90 minute patriots' (Jim Sillars) or worse.

But right now, we are a people in turmoil - and I don't just mean because of our travails on the football pitch.

These are hard times for everyone, so why should our football be any different?

But, since 22 grown men chasing a bag of win around a field is apparently such an important part of Scottish life, because our teams get horsed in Europe, we are supposed to all be in mourning, wringing our hands and wailing: "Woe, woe and thrice woe is me."

It's all part of being Scottish. The wind ae has to be in our faces. We are never happy unless we are miserable. Why this should be I don't know, it's all part and parcel of our psyche.

Maybe this, Chick Young, the Krankies, Scottish politicians (national and local), the A9 and A82 roads in summer, Gaelic mouth music, football phone-ins, Radio Clyde, West Sound, the Daily Record, the Sunday Post, George Peat and Justin and Colin are the price we have to pay (rather than having the English for neighbours) for all the goodnesses God dispensed to this charmed corner of a wee island off the coast of Europe.

Once we've sorted-out Lithuania and Leichtenstein, the strut will be back in our step, our chests will again be puffed out, we will be on the way back, well as far as Rangers' first Champions League disaster, Spain deciding to stop tika-takiing about and actually scoring goals against us and then the whole sorry cycle will begin again.

'Twas ever thus. The Wembley Wizards were a knee-jerk reaction to being beaten by Wales and Ireland. We gubbed World Champions England in 1967; next time out we lost at home to the USSR, then George Best beat us on his own in Belfast and from a position of strength, we failed to qualify for the 1968 European Championship finals.

But what is annoying about our present position is - I can see we're shite. Ninety-nine out of 100 callers to the various phone-ins can see; the same proportion of posters on on-line forums can see - Henry bloody McLeish can see, we've got huge problems in football.

The only people who apparently cannot see this are the guys who can actually do something about it - the buffoons in the SFA blazers at Hampden.

And that makes my blood boil. This self-elected, self-perpetuating bunch of no-brains, no-hope, no-idea no-vision wasters are so busy looking after themselves, they make Nero, fiddling while Rome burned, appear competent.

Can somebody please sort them out.

Rant over.