Not even mayhem in Syria is managing to distract the focus of our attention from the Olympics so the effort of the Edinburgh derby to do so, as the flame flickers on the last day, might seem like the forlorn effort of an octogenarian in a bath chair taking on Sir Chris in the velodrome.

But let us not mock their task as, in a way, they are fighting to retain our interest in the big-city derby now that Rangers play where hedgerows act as ball boys and Celtic are becoming indifferent to the term Old Firm. Local derbies are part of the essential nutrients of the game since they engender, if not inflame, tribal feelings that consolidate loyalty, as witness the sell-out Dundee derby.

But Edinburgh's is different. Not only is it bigger, it represents Scottish football's woes and pains in microcosm, and if you wish to witness a practical demonstration of the conflicting interests which brought about the acrimonious vortex around Rangers which sucked in so many groups, then it would be watching Hibs and Hearts at Easter Road tomorrow.

For, on the one hand, you have a club led by Rod Petrie who has been inexhaustibly central to the sporting integrity movement directed at Rangers largely through his manifestly clear ethic of stemming off debt at Easter Road and in which he was largely successful, until the construction of the training complex; albeit leaving them with a manageable deficit.

On the other side of the city you have the Baltic mogul who seems continually to defy gravity with a previous insouciance over debt that even Sir David Murray would envy, and who seems to send wage-packets via pigeon-post. The Calvinist against the Libertine you might say. And in the context of our own culture it is easy to predict that most people would prefer Petrie to be the exemplar, rather than Romanov. But let us not rush to judgment on that as debt was kept at bay by selling assets beloved by supporters. So it is a policy which might have been devised for masochists in the Hibs support, as pain became the natural outcome of derby day. Let us not forget that it almost brought a temporary end to the fixture as Hibs just managed to cling on to their status last season. And Hibs historians, of which there are plenty in their loyal support, might have ranked their teams's utter capitulation at Hampden last May with the French surrender at Dien Bien Phu to the Vietcong or the entire North African Italian Army to Montgomery. It was that bad. But it had been coming. Mediocrity seems to have been self-perpetuating, especially in this fixture where

Hearts are unbeaten in their last 10 derby league games with seven wins and three draws and you have to go back to 1974-78 to find Hibs best period where they were unbeaten in 12 successive derbies. It was during that golden period that the late W Gordon Smith of the BBC heard an insult being thrown at the rough and negative tactics of opponents against the constantly attacking Hibs side: 'Nihilists!'

As he pointed out, only at Easter Road, during the Festival, could you hear such invective. The problem is that the boot is now on the other foot. For such recurring humiliations, their fans are right to demand something very soon in return and for all the prudence in the boardroom this has stemmed from. There was precious little sign of that last week at Tannadice if that is anything to go by.

But the times they are-a-changin'. For this season Hearts have signed nobody and released 18 players. Has the Baltic mogul therefore seen the light? Has Rod Petrie Mark II been unveiled? Frankly, I think that in joining the chorus stridently against Rangers it would have seemed both perilous financially, and hypocritical, to carry on unchanged. With Rangers successfully shunted out of the way, and with Hibs looking just as weak as they have for several seasons, the chances of Hearts beating their old rivals and establishing themselves as potential runners-up to Celtic, they would have considered the cut and slash policy to be both prudent and productive.

This is also a tacit admission that investing heavily on a gamble for European success might be a pointless exercise. You could hardly fault them on that view given the recent lessons learned in the past few seasons that the gulf in quality between even average continental sides and our own is now perhaps unbridgeable. Of course Liverpool are in transition, with a new manager, so the forthcoming tie has its imponderables. But common-sense tells you that there is only one club in the land which could embrace such a tie and they are already on Champions League business.

A brutal financial hierarchy exists in European football which surely excludes the possibility of any Scottish club joining the elite and that means Celtic too, whose comparative wealth in our land is dwarfed even by any average club in England's Premier League. That is why our domestic league must be highly competitive.

Parochialism is no bad thing if you can still create genuine excitement among supporters. Hence the importance of local derbies. Which is why it would benefit Scottish football all round if Hibs were to stop the rot and look worthy of their jerseys again. If they cannot, then this derby could become a constant shoe-in for Hearts and an increasing irrelevance to the rest of Scottish football. The portents are not good for them.

I suspect the Hibs fans will be left experiencing what the great American sporting philosopher Yogi Berra meant, when he once said, 'It's déjà vu, all over again!'