Like Euan Burton, what he thought was his last big chance ended in first-round failure on English soil.

Like Burton he then watched his partner pick up a silver medal. Like Burton he has now, deep into his thirties, emerged from retirement to do battle for Scotland one last time.

At 38, it is now a decade since John Buchanan quit judo and it is 12 years since he took part in a major Games.

The parallels with what his flag-bearing team-mate underwent in London are remarkable since he gained huge consolation for his own disappointing performance in failing to win a fight from the success of then-girlfriend, now wife Clare's superb performance.

But it is rare in combat sport for anyone to return to involvement in a major Games after such a hiatus.

His self-assessment that he "can't do any worse this time" than in Manchester is perhaps harsh, but is fair and is delivered with little sentiment.

"At the time I was one of the favourites to do well, because I was a current world medallist," he said. "It was one of the first times that [Englishman] Craig Fallon beat me, and he went on to be world champion, so then it didn't seem quite as bad."

Fallon was to prove something of a Nemesis since, at that time, only one British player could be selected for major championships in each weight category, which seriously restricted opportunities.

"The decision to retire took me a year," Buchanan recalled. "I think he beat me twice, but he only just beat me. If he was smashing me out of the park it would have been a lot easier to accept I couldn't catch him up. That's why it took me a year to decide to retire, because judo had been such a massive part of my life since I was about nine or ten.

"I trained right up to the Athens Olympics, having represented GB at the Sydney Olympics. At Athens I was reserve to Craig … two weeks before it I decided to call it a day."

Yet any frustration he felt at that performance in Manchester and the way his subsequent ambitions were thwarted did not affect his passion for the sport.

" I've never felt like I've had enough of it. I teach judo for a living - myself and my wife run nine judo clubs across the central belt, Sportif Judo," he explained.

"I still went along and practised once a week or every couple of weeks, so I kept my hand in and I still love the sport, so after the Olympics, especially with the Commonwealth Games being in Scotland, I was inspired to take it up again.

"You normally represent Team GB, so to be part of Team Scotland at a home Games is just massive.

"That was my motivation, the fact it's in Scotland. If it was in Australia or somewhere else I wouldn't have bothered."

As with the decision to quit, so that to return was a slow-burner which, he acknowledged, was aided by the knowledge that there were less demands involved in fighting for Scotland than for Great Britain.

"I was thinking of coming back around the time of the London Olympics, but it would have meant six weeks in Japan and I would have been at the beck and call of the British Judo Association," Buchanan pointed out.

"I've got three kids - a six-and-a-half-year-old, a five-year-old, and a two-year-old - so it wouldn't have been that easy to do that, but at a home Games, the qualifying process is nowhere near as stringent.

"Judo Scotland and the Team Scotland guys have been a lot more flexible, which made it a bit more achievable. The kids will be there to see me."

He is acutely aware he cut things fine: "I think if I'd left it any later, I wouldn't have made the team," he admitted. "In hindsight, I wish I'd started a wee bit earlier. I've only really been competing properly for the last six months. The last result in my very last tournament secured my place in the team."

One thing that has not changed since Manchester is the expectation of the judo players who picked up 10 medals at that Games, a third of Scotland's overall medal haul.

Buchanan's defeat by Fallon then was one of the few failures and he is 12 years older, but he is undaunted by either age or experience.

"Yeah, I can medal. I definitely can," he insisted. "My main issue is that I'm 38 years old and every tournament I've gone into I've been carrying some kind of injury. If I make it to the start line in one piece, then I think I've got a really good chance of getting a medal."