IT wasn't so long ago that international football seemed more likely to retire him than vice versa. But fortunes change swiftly in sport and any retrospective of Scott Brown's Scotland career should start with the fact that nothing became him so much as the manner of his leaving. From the disappointments of last season, the 31-year-old has managed quite a piece of alchemy by bowing out of national service at a time when, quite simply, he is probably the best Scottish player on current form.

Okay, so the few remaining Scottish Barclays Premier League stars have had little time to fully demonstrate their form but Brown's contribution to the opening stages of the Brendan Rodgers era at Celtic has been nothing short of heroic.

Considering the two men hit it off immediately after the 31-year-old rocked up at Rodgers' London townhouse this summer with a dinner invite and a bottle of wine, it was perhaps appropriate that the Celtic manager should feel that, like all the best vintages, Brown will only get better with age. Having already compared him to Steven Gerrard, Rodgers yesterday used the example of Jamie Carragher when he predicted that retirement from the international game should allow him to play for Celtic at the top level until at least the age of 35. Possessed of an ability to read the game, bite in the tackle and leadership qualities, he believes the player has a future at centre half.

"His awareness and orientation in the game is great," said the Celtic manager. "And I also think later on he could play at centre half – as a No 2 centre half who understands the game, who’s got all the game in front of him. I think with the decision he’s made, looking forward, at 31-years of age … Scotty can at least get to 35. I had Jamie Carragher at 35 and he was my best centre half but he wanted to go out as one of the best. That would be another four years – it’s up to him then. Maybe he’ll speak to Gordon [Strachan] and go on until he’s 40."

It isn't just the Parkhead manager who eulogises about what the player has to offer. Even the number crunchers at Uefa tend to agree. Take, for instance, his contribution to the 5-2 first leg win against Hapoel Be'er Sheva in midweek which saw him score the crucial fifth goal and nearly grab another. "Technically he doesn’t get the credit he deserves," said Rodgers. "If you think, the other night, in a really high pressure game, he played 72 passes of which 71 were successful. So that’s 99 per cent of ball retention in the game at that level, under that intensity. He’s not just a sidewards-backwards guy either - he penetrates."

Brown was granted entry into the SFA roll of honour when his 50th and final match for his country came with a 1-0 friendly win against Denmark in March but it is stretching things to claim his ouevre will go down as one of the all-time great Scotland careers. He scored just four goals, all of them in winning efforts, and never got the chance to grace a major finals. Yet he must have been doing something right, considering such august names as Alex McLeish, George Burley, Craig Levein and Gordon Strachan rarely sketched out a Scotland team sheet without his name on it.

At his best moments, such as against a bewildered Florent Malouda and Franck Ribery at the Parc des Princes in Paris in September 2007, Brown brought an energy and desire capable of discomforting the best players on the planet. Like most of Gordon Strachan's team, his contribution had shaded towards the end of the Euro 2016 campaign, but it is ironic that he should go back on the pronouncement last March that he would "never make himself unavailable for Scotland" just as he appears to have returned to his zestful best.

Being asked by the rigours of the modern football calendar to commit his usual whole-hearted approach for at least 50 weeks of the year, Rodgers knows something had to give sooner or later. Celtic, for instance, returned to training this summer on June 25, but Brown's season wouldn't have been done until the meeting with England at Hampden on June 10, 2017.

"It would have had an impact, no doubt, on the quality of his game," said Rodgers. "What happens then is that Celtic don't quite get the player and Scotland doesn't quite get the same player. Then it is no good for anyone."

Ironically, considering that wine was taken during that first meeting, the first thing Rodgers preached to Brown was lifestyle, and the requirement to act 24/7 like a footballer. The Celtic manager, a long-term admirer who feels Brown could have "played in the Premier League if he had wanted to", quickly discerned that he was perfect for the kind of high pressing game he was trying to implement. While it seems like he is doing more running than ever, in fact the opposite is the case. A bit like Barcelona, Rodgers' Celtic endeavour to play in one half of the field only; the opposition's.

"With this way of working you are actually covering less field," explained the Northern Irishman. "When you are pressing high, and being aggressive in your pressure, you are working in half a pitch, so you are covering less space, you are not having to cover a whole field, just half a pitch to three quarters of a pitch. So your running is more intense but it is in shorter blocks."

A new era for Scotland, as much as Scott Brown himself, begins. The tunnel area at Wembley in November won't seem right without the Fifers' thousand-yard stare.