It has been a time for reflection and reminiscing this week for Craig Brown, but then most occasions are as he gathers with like-minded people and regales them with stories and anecdotes collected over 55 years at the sharp-end of professional football.

Sitting in the Aberdeen boardroom, a space with which he will become increasingly familiar after the tracksuit was hung up for the final time following yesterday's Pittodrie training session, Brown is his usual expansive self as he surveys a career and his own little niche in the history of the game in Scotland.

There is the declaration of pride, too, that he is the longest-serving manager of the national team and the last to steer them to a major final as he faces up to the realisation that, come Monday morning, he will have to reposition his thinking to accommodate his new status as a former manager.

He will be 73-years-old in July and while he has brought much-needed stability to an Aberdeen side for so long swimming against the tide, his two-and-a-half-year tenure has not been of the earth-shattering variety.

It was therefore unsurprising that he would not have his contract renewed and that younger blood, in the shape of Derek McInnes, would be invited to take the reins of a club that has frequently flirted with crisis and never fully recovered from the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson in 1986.

Tannadice this afternoon will be the setting for Brown's last hurrah, his players hoping to conjure a victory to send him on his way with a smile on his face.

Brown's story is impressive; from the days of being a boy among men with the junior side Coltness United and Scotland representative honours at that level, to an unspectacular period with Rangers, and a championship medal as a squad player with the famous Dundee team of the early 1960s which included stellar performers such as Alex Hamilton, Ian Ure, Andy Penman and Alan Gilzean.

"The best part of football is playing," he says, "though it was frustrating because of a knee injury which bedevilled me throughout my playing career."

It was while at Dundee that the insistence of manager Bob Shankly, like his brother Bill a gruff, no-nonsense kind of man, that players should keep themselves fit during a close season that was considerably longer than it is today by attending the SFA coaching courses at the Inverclyde Centre, that Brown's appetite for that side of football was whetted.

His eight-and-a-half-years, from 1993, in charge of the national side brought him to prominence during a period of buoyancy and excitement when Scotland reached the finals of Euro 96 and the World Cup in France two years later, achievements not since repeated and unlikely to be.

"I think I have to be fair to the managers who came after me," he insists, "as the players were better then and other countries weren't quite as strong. For example, when the USSR was split, there were teams in all the countries which once came under their banner, like Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and others, who weren't there before, and now participating in the international competitions.

"They invested heavily in football and had very good development programmes. We think we should beat Latvia no problem, but Latvia and Lithuania, for instance, have larger populations than Scotland and the governments of those countries saw football as a way of gaining recognition, hence their investment in it.

"We fell behind in facilities but not in player nor in coach development which, in Scotland, was second to none. Sir Alex and Jim McLean were never away from the coaching courses. Willie Ormond, Eddie Turnbull, Jimmy Bonthrone, they were the men who started it all and in later years coaches like Tommy Burns, Walter Smith, Gordon Strachan, Willie Miller and others all learned their coaching at Largs. But you can't develop players in the winter months without proper facilities."

Bandying around names like Jim Leighton and Andy Goram, Richard Gough and Tom Boyd, Graham Souness, Gordon Strachan, Maurice Johnston and Ally McCoist, fuels Brown's argument that the technique, flair and panache in the national side during his time has long since been absent from Scotland's armoury.

"I'm trying not to think about this being my last game," he says of the today's trip to Tannadice. "I'm just trying to focus on the game itself and our determination to do our best. There might have been the perception among the players of me going into the dressing room and them saying 'who's this old guy coming in here?' but I hope not. You've got to retire before that happens and not be accused of being yesterday's man or anything like that."I would like to think that I keep young and in touch with what's happening; I just can't stand the music they play in the changing room."