At the age of 30, Steven Naismith is hardly ready for the nibbie and yawning games of ludo at the day centre.

“When I started out, as soon as anyone turned 30, they were done, they were old,” he said with a withering chortle. “Now you see guys going to their mid-30s. Ronaldo is 32 and is still ripping it up in the world. Other guys cruise into their mid-30s.”

Naismith remains as fit as a freshly buffed up fiddle and has certainly got plenty left in the tank. What his future holds at Norwich City, where a new regime is set to ring the changes, remains shrouded in uncertainty but the Scotland striker will keep doing what he does best.

His footballing experiences both in his homeland and amid the rigours of the top flight in England have stood this admirable professional in good stead. The increasing years, meanwhile, bring their own benefits.

“You just get more experienced and you know what works for you and what doesn’t,” he said. “I spend more time in the gym. You stretch off a lot more. This has come into football and you spend more time on it. You get a taste of that and you feel fresher, you like it. You do it now because you know it helps you not because someone says it’s good for you.

“Davie Weir always said to try to play as long as you can. As you get older, you do appreciate it more. When it’s finished, your body is done. You can’t go back and replicate that feeling of playing on a Saturday and of winning.

“Every player when they finish strives to try to get those feelings back. I’ll look after myself and try to play as long as I can.

“Every club I have been at has been different. When I moved from Kilmarnock to Rangers it was more of a professional set-up, there were more resources at your disposal. Then you go to England and at Everton they had a brand new training facility, they had more staff, so you get new ideas. Every stage you go through, you progress.”

Naismith has already stated his intention to come back up the road and finish his career in his native land. He cares for the game north of the border and is well aware of the problems Scottish football faces as it continues to muddle on in the margins.

“I just watch the football and think that I want to live the rest of my life in Scotland, go to football matches and enjoy them,” he said. “I want to think ‘what a product we have here’. We’re a small country compared to England and that’s a comparison that’s unfair. They have a league that’s amazing, it’s marketed in an amazing way. We need to know where we’re at and what we can do. We need to give youngsters the best opportunity, but we have 42 professional clubs in a country with five-and-half million people. Is that too many?

“But so many other changes need to be made. How big is the problem? It’s massive. We need to get fans back to generate money for clubs and then use that money sensibly and not just for a bigger player budget. You need a bigger structure than that. Don’t get me wrong, clubs are trying but change needs to come from the top, not at each individual club.

“I watch Scottish football all the time. The play-off game was a good, entertaining game because there was a lot of guys going at 100 mph, but there was a bit of quality lacking there.

“We have teams playing on astro turf because it benefits them budget-wise but, for the good of Scottish football, we need to be a professional level at a high standard that people want to watch. Whether that’s changing to summer football, changing to one body controlling everything in football, there’s so many things that need to change. People need to put aside their individual agendas for the best thing for Scotland.”

Coming back to the auld haunts o’ hame can be a common occurrence. Henrik Larsson, for instance, returned to Sweden for his final years as a player after a glory-laden career with Feyenoord, Celtic and Barcelona. If and when Naismith does re-emerge in the Scottish game, he will certainly not be coming back merely to eke out the twilight years. There will be a wider sense of duty.

“It’s not about going back up the road, just to tick along and pick up a wage,” he declared. “It’s more about coming back and hopefully giving some young guys, who were in my position when I started, the knowledge that I’ve had. Hopefully I can play in a team that’s good, enjoy it and help them progress.”

For the time being, Naismith is focusing on his immediate future. As one of the higher earners at Norwich, where he still has two years of his contract left to run, there is talk that the new powers-that-be at Carrow Road are keen to offload him from the wage structure. His fellow Scot, Graham Dorrans, is in a similar position and Rangers are in the hunt to bring the midfielder back to Scotland.

Dorrans endured a frustrating spell with injury but returned for the last few games of the campaign as Norwich finished with a flourish but came up short of the play-off places.

“He was the biggest miss of the season for us,” Naismith said. “Our best performances were when he was in the team. When you are a forward and you are playing with Dozzy, you know you can find the wee pockets and he’ll deliver that pass. He’ll not play safe and knock it side to side. He wants to force the issue, that’s a big thing. But the club (Norwich) is in a transitional period, sacrifices may have to be made and he might be one of them.”