MY mate Tam has a habit of being confused by the most simple of situations. He was invalided out of the army after a misunderstanding over what bit of the grenade he should be thrown and what bit he should retain.

Similarly, he did not grasp the meaning of a Twitter campaign that urged that ‘’seal clubs should be saved from clubbing’’.

“They should be allowed to socialise like the rest of us,” he said.

He is, however, sure about the state of Scottish football. “Geez it is so depressing it should be sponsored by Prozac,” he told me as we jostled for position in the therapist’s office. “I mean, we can’t even arrange to get beat in international week,” he added, noting that the Scottish international team does not have a fixture this weekend. Taking deep breaths and thinking of my happy place (a bus shelter looking on to Girvan beach, since one asks), I replied that my nerves could not have survived a play-off battle against Bosnia Herzegovina. Or even just Herzegovina, to be frank.

My advice was to look on the bright side, even if that brightness was being caused by a meteor hurtling towards the couch we shared. He was not up for it. “Listen, the only good news this week,” he said, “was that Scotland did not have a programme to cheat on drugs. Mind you, Scotland never does performance-enhancing drugs. We content ourselves with performance-diminishing drugs.”

His mood would not have been lifted by a crane constructed entirely of MDMA. But I sought to remind him there were reasons to be cheerful over Scottish sport. I then embarked on a litany of success that only occurred last week: Glasgow’s rugby team beat Cardiff; a Scottish golfer (Russell Knox with that distinctive Possil accent) beat Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy to win a squillion pounds in China; Andy Murray almost assured his place as the second best tennis player in the world; Dunblane are heading to win the world tennis cup in Belgium this month; Elise Christie won the 500m in the speedskating World Cup; and one of this nation’s clutch of excellent swimmers – in this case Ross Murdoch – won a bronze in the 100m breaststroke in the world cup in Dubai. And I added: “The rugby team did well in the world cup. There was ample opportunity to embarrass themselves and us and they gave that a Barry John sidestep.”

Tam was not convinced, however. “Our national sport is fitba and we are crap at it,” he said. Channelling my inner Neil Doncaster, I replied: “There are certainly challenges. But, going forward, it is what it is.” This, surprisingly, had the effect of some form of electroconvulsive therapy, leading Tam to admit the women’s football team was doing well, the under-age teams threaten to produce some good footballers and, undoubtedly, the A squad would emerge unbeaten from this international break.

Leaving aside the reality that the Scottish club sides have been as successful in Europe as Betamax tapes, Tam also pointed out something else he had gleaned from Twitter. “There is a gadge on there who calculates attendances in a country’s top league per capita of population. More Scots per capita go to games than in the top flight in England, Italy, Spain, France or Germany,” he said. This calculation, too, was based on a weekend when Celtic were playing away from home in Dingwall.

This surely is conclusive proof of a love that shouts its name, sometimes to such an extent that the local constabulary become involved. It shows that football for all its trials (and convictions) and all its tribulations is still the national sport. It proves that the link between punter and the Scottish game may be weakening but still remains immensely strong in the face of challenges, both economic and aesthetic.

Those of us who were brought up watching the game in Scotland in the sixties can accurately state that we peered on (and were peed upon) as some of the best players in Europe went about their business in subsequent decades. No sane man could make that claim now. Yet the attraction remains for many of us. That dubious allure of the Scottish game is what persuaded more than 50,000 punters to dig into their pockets for last week’s premiership fixtures. More than 43,000 trooped along to Ibrox and a further 4500 watched Hibs in Paisley. One tips a sodden hat to the 316 who witnessed East Stirling beat Queen’s Park.

My journeys in Scottish football have revealed to me the reality that the game means so much to people that they do not reserve their activity to Twitter feuds or phone-in rants but pay their hard-earned and devote chunks of their leisure time to watch the less than top class. Their ranks may be dwindling but they are still an impressive bunch. They are devoted to their individual clubs.

It may be a different sort of clubbing from that envisioned by Tam but it still has the capacity to intoxicate the paying punter.

Why else would they venture out in weather that would make the most adventurous seal curl up on a sheltered rock, put the flippers up and watch the Great British Hake Off?