THE verdict was unanimous among players and coaches. In my spectacular, dramatic pomp, I was simply unplayable.

As Big Norrie, the Jag’s supremo, would tell me on the phone of a Saturday lunchtime: “Your speed, your first touch, your attitude ... it all adds up to one thing. Don’t bring your boots. You’re unplayable.”

I would only make a St Ninian’s squad when Norrie’s resources were diminished by injury, suspension, work commitments and the insistent demands of Scotland’s criminal justice system.

A full complement of Jags of the early-1980s would have given Barcelona a decent game. They would also have given Barcelona such a physical thrashing that it would have made McGregor-Diaz in the UFC seem as frightening as an argument in a creche. Early exchanges in Jags games were the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s first reel of Saving Private Ryan. He had already plundered the style and threat of Wee Mick at left-back for the opening scenes of Jaws.

But the Jags could play football. And, increasingly, I could not. My lifestyle had eventually caught up with me. I was 25. Drink had given me the sort of hue that ensured I made the last audition for Homer in The Simpsons. Refs increasingly failed to stop the game when I went down for a fag. There was also a limited tolerance on behalf of my team-mates when I lingered at corners, asking spectators who had won the 3.15 at Pontefract.

I was thus condemned to spend my sporting life as part of the Jags’ committee, a group of young men so, erm, committed that the grouping should have been called The Cartel, with meetings designated as sitdowns.

I thus sympathise with those who did not make the Scotland squads for the non-qualification campaigns this week. The spectre of rejection haunts us all and it is no different for footballers, though I suspect north of 50 grand a week provides a soothing balm to most emotional wounds.

The problem I have with Gordon Strachan’s squad is that I have no problem with it. I was brought up in the atmosphere of extraordinary controversy over a Scotland squad. The omission of Ross McCormack and Justin of Rhodes, both legendary slayers of Championship defences, may verge ever so slightly on the questionable but one is hardly going to write to one’s MP about it. Well, this one ain’t .

It was not always so. The problem with nostalgia in Scottish football is that it is never warm and comforting. It hurts so much there are clubs in Amsterdam who have it on special offer, with optional leather mask.

As my media mates were trying to froth up something over omissions from Wee Gord’s squad, I drifted back into the 1970s. The controversy then was of a different nature.

There was in that time a suspicion about selecting players who plied their trade with such nonentities as Manchester United, Leeds United, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur. Yup, there were those who were far from keen on picking such as Dave Mackay, Billy Bremner, Denis Law, Ian St John and others.

Now, leaving aside the viable theory that all of the aforementioned would be genuine candidates for a world XI at the time, the sceptics of such talent argued that home players – that is, those who were selected from Scottish clubs – should be preferred.

It is this sort of atmosphere that led to the wonderful Bremner muttering about feeling far from appreciated on occasion when playing at Hampden. He was not misguided in his belief. I witnessed a vigorous discussion in the 1970s with one fan and a fellow Scotland supporter who had spent 90 minutes evaluating wee Billy in a monologue whose fervency and scatological content inspired Quentin Tarantino, though the subsequent violence was surely unfilmable even for the unshockable American.

There are aspects of the 1970s that may shock the modern soul. We once not only smoked in front of children but offered them a draw. We once watched sitcoms so racist, misogynistic and downright objectionable they could be a Ukip election broadcast. We once – and may God forgive us – thought that not only were we good, if underachieving, at fitba’ but that we would always be so.

It led us to the hubris of questioning such as Law, Mackay and other greats. It led us to the assumption that if we did not fancy genius on the other side of the Border then there was more than enough up here to keep us satisfied. It led us to the edge of the cliff.

We have now walked over it. And McCormack and Rhodes, lovely blokes and talented players, will not save us. The suspicion is that we are auditioning for another failure and one has sympathy for all the participants in Scotland colours, blue or pink.

But ritual humiliation should not be the preserve of the professional. There are those of us who were born for it and should be drafted into the squad. Now where are those boots ...