Intertwined with the personal and civic pride he is entitled to feel as Inverness Caledonian Thistle take the field in the Scottish Cup final today Iain Polworth would not be human if he did not feel a certain amount of envy on both counts.

Son Liam is part of a squad that has, this season, taken football in his home city to a new level but it was all very different when Polworth senior was a boy.

A player of some promise in the mid-eighties the only option he had as a 16-year-old was to head more than 100 miles from home to the nearest senior club and doing so gave him an early experience of operating in a rarified atmosphere, signed by none other than Alex Ferguson towards the end of his time at Aberdeen.

"I was really lucky to be rubbing shoulders with Scottish greats like Alex McLeish, Jim Leighton and Willie Miller and there were boys knocking on the door who weren't regulars at that time like Paul Wright and Willie Falconer, who went on to have really good careers in Scottish football," he recalls.

Polworth is commendably honest in his assessment of his own place within that set-up.

"I could see I wasn't at that level, but of course you wanted to keep playing football," he says, noting that plenty of youngsters underwent similar experiences in not being able to make the grade at Pittodrie in that era and so being forced to look elsewhere to stay involved in the sport.

Offers came in from south of the border and he went so far as to undertake a trial with Peterborough United, but shrewdly worked out that in those days the risk was such, taking into account living costs in relation to wages, that the "safer option" was to return home, start work and play football in his own backyard in the Highland League.

Doing so demonstrated that while he may have learned a great deal about football at Aberdeen after being recruited by arguably the greatest manager in the British game's history, he had absorbed life lessons too.

"When I was there you saw boys break down and people don't realise it," Polworth explains.

"You're maybe only 100 or 150 miles from Glasgow or from up north and yet there are still boys breaking down and crying because of homesickness and again because of the football environment you're in there's so much time off, which is very dangerous.

"You can go down and get the wrong habits or go back to your digs and the boredom. It's a balancing act."

As rightly proud as he is of what his 20-year-old son has already achieved with his home city club as the youngest player ever to represent ICT's first team, then, Polworth also notes that Liam is fortunate to have had such an opportunity so close to home.

"Any father is proud of their son's achievements, but before if he wanted to get professional football he would have had to go away. Now it's on the doorstep so he's extraordinarily lucky. Although you feel a sense of pride in it he's got to feel lucky as well," he observes.

"With Caley Thistle and Ross County now in the top division it's opened up a whole avenue."

It also transformed the local football environment, the impact of which Polworth's career choices have left him better placed to assess than anyone.

A lengthy career in the Highland League included the rare achievement of playing for all three of the competition's Inverness clubs.

"I was a former Caley player who'd just gone to Thistle when the divide came and I never went to the new team at all, purely because my job wouldn't allow it," he explains.

Instead he subsequently spent some time with Elgin City before finishing his playing career at Clachnacuddin, the third of the city's long established Highland League teams but which retained its identity after turning down any involvement in the merger that gave Inverness the chance of involvement in national league competition.

More recently Polworth has been manager of Clach, steering the club that has won the Highland League more often than any other - 18 times in all - through administration just after taking the job six years ago and is consequently as aware as any that some of its support is drawn from those who remain angry about the merger of Caledonian and Thistle which produced ICT.

"There are still some diehards who come through the gates at Clach because they won't go to Caley Thistle's stadium. There are people on both sides, both Thistle and Caley supporters who won't got because they were dead against the merger," he notes.

However Polworth was always among those who saw the opening of a pathway into the national leagues as a good thing for the Highlands and he feels he has been given no reason to change his mind.

"I thought at the time that Inverness could sustain both a Highland League team and a Scottish League team and I think that's been proved," he says.

"I'm not saying all their players are from Inverness, that's never going to happen, but the city itself must be thriving on the back of Caley Thistle being there.

"If you'd asked the same question 10 years ago when they were going through the divisions it was detrimental to the Highland League when they first came out, when Ross County, Caley and Thistle first came out and then Elgin and Peterhead.

"However the Highland League bounced back as well on the back of them progressing because they're needing better players to progress all the time and players that aren't making the grade are then coming into the Highland League and obviously progressing the Highland League."

While ICT lost out in the League Cup final last season Polworth was steering Clach to a first trophy win in a decade and since undergoing administration in the Highland League's equivalent competition and he is delighted that the senior club is now going for a first major trophy once more.

Beyond that he does not anticipate Clach - whose wage bill is a small percentage of some of the currently more ambitious clubs in the Highland League - gaining elevation to the national competition in the foreseeable future. However having worked under the very best and citing admiration for the excellent work done by all those who have managed ICT during their short history, he still aims to set high standards for his players.

"You want to take something in and you want to make your semi-professional club as professional as possible and try to run it the right way and try to make the players the best they can have on the budget you've got," he says.

Those who visit Highland League clubs can, though, also continue to expect a rather different type of footballing environment from that in the SPFL.

"It's more community orientated and more of a friendly environment and atmosphere," Polworth reckons.

"At the end of the day your professional clubs are all about where you finish in the league and it's all harnessed around money. Maybe that doesn't happen in the Highland League."

Maybe not, but having both options available seems ideal for the Inverness football family, not least the Polworth branch.