It’s tough at the top … but it’s even tougher at the bottom. When it comes to shattered dreams and crushed ambitions, the rough and tumble of football tends to produce the kind of vast, twisted, mangled scrapheap that would have had Albert Steptoe rubbing his hands together with gap-toothed glee. Being left on that particular pile is the one thing that young hopefuls dread but from rejection can stem resurrection. You can easily be left scunnered in Scotland but for some, there is the opportunity to chase the American dream.

The phrase ‘have boots will travel’ in the world of fitba’ is as worn and frayed as the aforementioned Steptoe’s fingerless gloves but Ross Lindsay packed up his kit and ventured into the unknown by taking up a scholarship at Campbellsville University in rural Kentucky. There’s a queer old difference between the 22-year-old’s native Paisley and the bluegrass state well known for its eponymous fried chicken. Then again, Paisley probably does a roaring trade in KFC at pub kicking out time. Having been at his hometown club, St Mirren, since the age of five, Lindsay left at 16 and moved down the M77 to Kilmarnock. Three years later, there was the ominous call to come into the manager’s office. “It was Kenny Shiels at the time,” reflected Lindsay of a sombre situation that many young footballers will experience. “He said ‘we like you but we’ve got quite a lot of players in that position and there’s not going to be a spot for you’. It was pretty gutting to be released and it was hard to take. Playing football was all I’d done and that’s all I was planning to do. I wasn’t really into education as much as I should’ve been and I knew I needed something to fall back on.”

Trials on both sides of the border didn’t come to much but the opportunity to kick-start both his footballing education and, well, his education in general would arrive through a man who made a name for himself in a different ball game. Barry Hume, the former Scottish Amateur golf champion who had a stint bouncing around the globe in the professional ranks, offered his services through his ‘Soccer Innovation’ programme, a company aimed at helping young footballers find scholarships in the US college system.

David Weir, the current assistant manager at Rangers, is one of the most well-kent Scots to follow a similar path when he embarked on a scholarship in the late 1980s and Lindsay, who helped his Campbellsville University team win the Mid-South Conference title for the first time just before Christmas, continues to savour the chance to rekindle his career.

“I did fear what would happen when I got released and there are plenty of players who have ended up on the scrapheap, get disillusioned and don’t know where to turn,” added Lindsay, who is combining his football with a sports management degree and is set to graduate later this year. “There is certainly talent in Scotland and I played with a number of lads who just didn’t get the chance at clubs and from there, you can easily disappear off the scene. I was fortunate and I would definitely recommend this type of thing. There’s more to life and more to football than being in Scotland.”

Hume would agree with that sentiment. “A lot of those we deal with have been released by clubs and they think their life is over, but we can plug them back in, get them over to the US and start again," he said.

Excellent facilities, an alluring climate and a sturdy competitive footballing scene? There have been plenty of positives from this trip into uncharted territory for Lindsay.

“When I first travelled out a couple of years ago, I flew to New York then got a tiny plane down to Louisville and I was thinking ‘what the hell am I doing here?’,” he admitted. “It was quite an eye-opener. Facilities wise, it’s much better than many of the professional set ups back in Scotland. We have an outdoor field, an indoor seven aside hall and a massive gym. There are boys in the team from England, Japan, Brazil and Sweden. I’m learning different ways of playing but off the field I’m learning different cultures. All round it’s been hugely beneficial to me as a person. It’s a pretty quiet place with no great distractions. You can get on with your football and your studies.

“I was out of school for about four years so going back to study and books was a bit of change for me but, after losing much of my enthusiasm for football, coming out here has given me the fresh start that I needed.”