GORDON Greer is not the retiring type. The Blackburn Rovers central defender was older when he received his first cap than Scott Brown was when he received his last so he is too busy making up for lost time to go the way of the Celtic captain and call time on his international career any time soon.
Indeed, a move to one of his first clubs this summer has got Greer acting like a big kid again. So determined was the 35-year-old not to sacrifice his squad berth with Scotland when he was released from Brighton this summer that he spoke at length with national team manager Gordon Strachan before agreeing to join Owen Coyle's Blackburn revolution.
Another man who inadvertently helped make the move happen was Grant Hanley, whose transfer to Newcastle United this summer left a vacancy of sorts at the back.
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"There was talk of me going anyway but I think when Granty left that just kind of made it certain," said Greer. "He did me a favour, the big man!"
Results, mind you, haven't exactly gone to plan thus far. The Ewood Park side - who yesterday added another Scot to their ranks in the form of Charlie Mulgrew - sit rock bottom of the SkyBet Championship, with a solitary point to their name.
With six first-team appearances under this belt this season already, however, Greer has been a mainstay. If Gordon Strachan names his team on the strength of their game time thus far, then it will be he and Christophe Berra who start against Malta on Sunday, and not the regular duo from the previous campaign, Russell Martin and Hanley.
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"Everybody's circumstances are different," said Greer. "I came into it very late, while Broony was probably playing international football early on. But I would never turn my back on my country. I can totally see it [why Brown retired] but at the same time I have waited this long so I am not going to give it up easy. I wanted to stay in the Championship purely so I could stay in the Scotland squad. I spoke to Gordon and he was great - he gave me some advice and I am sure he spoke to Owen Coyle as well."
Having said that, there were some strange old emotions to confront when he returned to a club where he spent two happy years after the turn of the millennium, even if he didn't see too much in the way of first-team action. "It was weird," said Greer. "Obviously it is the same building and some of the same staff are there, even if the club has changed ownership a few times.
"Graeme Souness was the manager when I was there, and Barry Ferguson and Lorenzo Amoruso were there around then too," he added. "But it is a good club, with great facilities and hopefully we can put it right on the pitch and start climbing up the league."
The likes of Richard Gough, Colin Hendry and David Weir all did a sterling job for Scotland in their mid-to-late 30s and Greer is angered somewhat by fielding the same old questions at national team press conferences: namely, why are you still around. In fact, he feels he is getting better as a player rather than entering a decline, crediting a number of minute changes to his diet and lifestyle for helping prolong his career.
"Nowadays there are so many people behind the scenes who don't get enough credit," said Greer. "Physios, masseurs, dieticians, doctors - we are obviously eating all the right foods and recovering the right way. I have still got a desire that I want to keep playing and I still want to play at the top level. So I will do what it takes to play at the top level.
"In one sense it is frustrating, that everyone just looks at your age and doesn't look at your stats from the game," he added. "But in another way, it is a good thing, because you look within yourself and think 'could I have done better?', 'could I do more?'. I think as a defender you get better with age. They say that if you are a midfielder your peak is around 26,27 while if you are a defender it is a little bit older
"When I was younger I could go out on a Saturday night, have a few beers and feel fine," he added. "Now I don't do that - or very rarely. Then there is my diet - I don't eat high fatty foods or whatever. This is not to say that I never will, but I cut down on them, and watch what I am doing. I recover well, try to sleep a bit more, take protein shakes, there area a lot of things go into it but it just wee small changes. It is up to me to stay mobile and see where it takes me." In the absence of the great Scottish centre halves of the future, Scotland hope some veteran smarts can take them all the way to Russia.
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