THE photograph that accompanies these witterings has been the subject of renovations on a scale normally reserved for medieval castles.

It attempts to make me look middle-aged. I am not. I am very, very old. I just look older.

This reality confronts me in the mirror every morning. I start my day with a fright. It also becomes apparent on meeting the wider world. Lumbering aboard a bus at Warsaw airport to take me to the terminal (a building not my demise, though there was some debate to what was nearer), I was greeted by a Scotland player on board inquiring if I wanted his seat. This polite gesture by Chris Martin, who plays for Derby County and also sings for Coldplay, was declined, possibly because I could not summon up enough breath to speak.

But it was testimony that some gentility survives in the modern game. It was never so in the old days. Footballers of the sixties and seventies would only offer one a seat after they had removed it from one's orifice.

They were as hard as an ice sculpture of the Krays. Last Sunday, I listened in childlike awe as Denis Law darted through his career with Dougie Donnelly at the Scottish Football Hall of Fame dinner. Sir Denis of Wembley 1967 is 74. But he still looks like the Rod Stewart of the 1970s. He is as hard, too, as that pack of hamburgers at the bottom of the freezer marked: Genuine 100% Scottish Tyrannosaurus. He had to be.

Football in his era was Ultimate Fighting with a ball. Law was as thin as an ironed After Eight. But he could take a kicking. And give a dunt, most emphatically with his napper. His elbows, too, were sharpened to a point to keep defenders at bay but also came in useful when the missus had mislaid the tin opener.

Law was in convivial mood on Sunday and roared abuse at the table containing Leeds United players. This may have been perceived by younger members of the audience as good-natured joshing. The older generation knew there was an edge to it.

Some of those who took part in football of the 1970s may reflect on it misty-eyed. This would only be because someone had jabbed them in the peepers at a corner kick at Maine Road in 1971.

The most stunning effect in football - apart from being struck in the napper by a frozen Mouldmaster - is to watch games of the past and wince at the brutality of the tackling. Chopper Harris was not so named because he had a modern bike. There was no irony in the dubbing of Pearce as Pyscho. Great players had to have the toughness and inherent anger of an SAS officer who has just been told that his regiment is to be merged with the catering corps.

There was no protection from referees. These whistlers were so lenient they had to be removed from the Nuremberg trials after they recommended that Herman Goering be given community service. They sentenced Hitler, in absentia, to a severe talking to.

Football then was a jungle that was given some sort of order by primitive emotions and actions. The only crime was "to take a liberty". Given the violent excesses on show, it must be presumed "taking a liberty" was restricted to matters involving amputation without anaesthetic.

Modern times have allowed the more subtle talents to flourish. Stricter refereeing, the outlawing of the tackle from behind, the intolerance of reckless challenges and other humane measures have combined to allow Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and others to bewitch the spectator or the television viewer at home.

My old dodderiness welcomes all of this. One has no longing for the days when Diego Maradona could simply be obliterated in a tackle that would not only destroy the physical matter of tendon or cartilage but end a season, even abbreviate a career.

But something stirs when one is in the presence of such as Law. It has to do with preposterous notion that the greats of the past would not be equipped to play the modern game. The simple truth is that Denis, Jinky, Georgie and others would be unbelievable, unplayable, unstoppable. And I will stick the napper on anyone who disagrees with me. Soapbox mutterings over now I am off for a wee sit down.