WANT to become a world class Scottish sportsperson? Sadly, the crucial first step still seems to be getting yourself out of Scotland as quickly as possible.
While Scotland has always waved its brightest and best away at the border, in all walks of life, confirmation this week that top Scottish judoka like Sally Conway will have their UK lottery funding cut if they fail to relocate to Walsall from their training base Ratho, near Edinburgh, was merely further evidence of a direction of travel which can at sometimes feel demoralising to sports professionals north of the border.
You hardly need to be a rocket scientist to discern the reasoning behind this tartan talent transfer. In order to develop properly, aspiring athletes need access to the best resources and facilities, not to mention a top level training group and competition against the best talents their sport has to offer. In the unlikely event that Scotland can provide the former, it seriously struggles to provide the latter.
As patriotic as they are, both Murray brothers cottoned on to that fact pretty quickly, even if uprooting away from all friends and family will never be for everyone. While Andy spent a formative 18 months out in Barcelona, and both men now divide their time between the South East of England and a variety of glamorous outposts on the global tennis tour, as a teenager Jamie spent time at a residential LTA camp in Cambridge, a period which didn't pan out exactly as he might have hoped.
While a satellite base for judo in Ratho will remain long term - judo, whilst omitted from the roster for the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast is provisionally back for Durban in 2022 - and any judoka who refuses to relocate will still be allowed un-prejudicial access to Team GB qualification for Olympic games and European and world championships, the list of sports with high performance bases north of the border is an ever diminishing one.
Scotland is a fairly obvious base for British Curling, considering our heritage in the sport and the fact England has only one bespoke curling rink in the entire country. Then there is swimming, where a posse of world class talents like Duncan Scott, Ross Murdoch and Craig Benson are still clustered away from GB competitors like Adam Peaty and James Guy up at the University of Stirling.
Elsewhere, despite the millions lavished on the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, the best Scottish cyclists like Callum Skinner and Katie Archibald would be daft if they weren't soaking up expertise from the likes of Jason Kenny and his wife Laura in Manchester or at the Team GB and Paralympic GB training camps at Wales Cycling's HQ in Newport. Scottish athletics is a huge success story but the hard yards are often undertaken away from these shores. Laura Muir, who up until this year was combining elite performance on the continent with her vet training in Glasgow, is perhaps the exception which proves the rule.
While golf is perhaps a special case, given the enviable facilities to be found here, and Scotland's rugby union franchises hold their own due to direct financing from the SRU, it somehow says it all about the state of Scottish football that twice, in back-to-back internationals against Malta and Lithuania, Gordon Strachan should name a team with only one Scottish-based starter. That man was Callum Paterson of Hearts, and had the Tynecastle club not been more resolute during the transfer window, he wouldn't have been based in Scotland either.
Even Anna Signeul's Scotland women's side, who will become the first national team to play at a major finals in the Netherlands next year, have a squad where the bulk of their players, most notably Lisa Evans of Bayern Munich, Kim Little of Arsenal and Jane Ross of Manchester City, ply their trade outwith Scotland
The question is simply whether we should worry about this, or shrug our shoulders and get on with it. As much promise as young players such as Paterson, John McGinn and Kieran Tierney display, it is legitimate to ask how much further they can plausibly develop within the confines of the Scottish game. If people in Northern Ireland, or fans of League of Wales clubs didn't seem to worry too much about the poverty of their own domestic set-ups when their teams were gracing Euro 2016, why should Argentinians, Uruguayans and Brazilians worry that Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar have become the players they are today because they moved from South America to a different continent at a young age?
Clearly it would be best if our elite Scottish performers were still around to provide inspiration and material assistance to the next generation. But the point, perhaps, is that - with a second independence referendum on the way - Scotland just needs to do the best that it can with the resources it has. Exactly what would happen to our world class superstars in the event of a 'yes' vote is hard to second guess but Scotland owes it to its children to provide as robust a sporting development system as possible, while understanding that the biggest assistance we could provide to our superstars of the future is letting them go.
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