IT was, I suppose, my tribute to reality television. A sort of I’m A Nonentity Get Me Out of Here. There was news of apocalyptic happenings on the South Side of Glasgow. So I headed for the safety of Brussels. I will do anything to avoid a Scotland strip launch.

Brussels was interesting. It was as if I had been dropped in the middle of an Action Man convention. I have not seen so many soldiers since an Ibrox matchday. All the posh hotels had two soldiers posted outside. Mine had two health and safety inspectors on the door pleading with me not go in.

It was not so bad. There was some sort of problem with the plumbing. I raced down to reception to inform them. “I am having trouble with a wheezing old geyser in my room,” I said.

“It seems we have the same problem in reception,” said the clerk, holding my gaze intently.

There was, however, a more genial welcome in the bars. They were as empty as the sports editor’s napper though curiously reeked of less alcohol. After a wee trip to Grand Place and some moules frites (something fishy about them as they did not taste of mule at all), I found myself, physically and spiritually, in a bar stool facing television coverage of Lyon v Ghent. The pub was hardly bouncing. I have seen more life in that carton of milk right at the back of the office fridge. But the locals, both of them, seem pleased that Ghent won the match and now sit second in the group, keeping their chances alive of progressing to the knockout stages of the Champions League.

Now this would normally be a cue for me to bang on about it being a sign of the times when a Belgian city of 500,000 can produce a team that wins in Europe when Scotland etc and soddin’ etc…

But I have become inured to ignominies inflicted upon the Caledonian cause in Europe. I prefer to find something positive in my viewing. So while the rest of the world was watching Barca edge Roma 6-1, I was very content to keep my peepers on Ghent.

They did well. They lost a goal early on and won it in time added on. In fact, it was so much time added on that it was almost Wednesday. But it was their equaliser that rewarded my slack-eyed devotion to the match. It was a training ground move. Not the sort of training ground move when Nadir Ciftci tramples on Wee Emilio. Not the sort of training ground move that involves Deep Heat in private areas.

No, this was a worked-out move. Basically, three Ghent players stood in front of the ball and then parted like the Red Arrows as a guy named Danijel Milicevic knocked the ball over the wall and into the net. One would have had as much chance discerning Labour’s policy in Trident than saving this free kick.

Its best effect, though, was to take me into a journey to the past. Nowadays the dim and distant past usually concerns an inquiry as to where I have left my car keys.

But now and again, football memories flood my synapses. This can be embarrassing in company but the nappies are helping. Anyway. Ghent’s clever wheeze prompted me to recall the best contrived free kicks I have seen and, wonderfully, Scots feature prominently.

I am not talking about the bullet free-kick so brilliantly executed by such as Davie Cooper, Murdo McLeod or Jim Bett. Nor do I refer to the majestic curler over the top of the wall so wonderfully struck by Shunsuke Nakamura. Nope. I am thinking about cunning ploys.

Off the top of my head, a surface as smooth as a bowling bowl with an interior of similar intellectual capacity, I came up with two. The first is the kid-on row between Gordon Strachan and John McMaster over who should take a free-kick against Bayern Munich in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup of 1983. The German defence switches off (they were brewing up) and Big Eck heads home. The other one comes from the days when Match of the Day was worth watching. It involved Ernie Hunt and Willie Carr, intriguingly a sort of Gordon Strachan tribute act. Wee Willie locked the ball between his two feet, jumped in the air, releasing said ball to be volleyed in by Ernie. Absolute magic.

Both ploys became schoolboy staples, with unfortunate consequences. The kid-on rammy rapidly denigrated into such scenes that the Children’s Panel became involved. And the Willie Carr hitch-kick caused more injuries than the psycho in Hitchcock.

I know the Ghent free-kick will be coming to a ground near you because now everyone has seen it and some will want to use it. But I prefer a more traditional, contrived free-kick.

It is this: one guy runs over the ball; another guy runs over the ball; the third guy kicks it with the strength of a non-frite mule and it hits a guy in the wall in the testicles. And it serves the defender right for wearing the new Scotland strip.