FOOTBALL can be a cruel mattress.

There I was dozing peacefully in the Hampden foyer when the bugle was sounded and the hounds of the press pack were roused to chase a football chairman down the steps of Hampden as league reconstruction collapsed in the way that makes a Lindsay Lohan meltdown seem decorous.

As we passed my second-hand Ford Fiasco, I realised I was catching up with Stewart Gilmour, chairman of St Mirren, and the implications became dreadfully clear. I was asking questions of a man I don't know about a subject he didn't want to talk about and that I, frankly, do not care about.

Welcome to my life. This is Scottish football 2013, not so much a galaxy of possibility but a space oddity. I returned to the foyer where, after listening to my cd of collected Neil Doncaster press conferences, I slipped back into a deep sleep.

I need it. The problem with Scottish football is that nothing very much happens but it all occurs at a frenetic pace. It is the creche of the world game. The participants squabble, cry and jostle over who is to get on the see-saw with the big boy. Then they all go for a nap. And do it again the next morning.

It was, therefore, edifying to note a small paragraph in the newspaper as security men gently led me away from Hampden, kindly slipping a £1 coin into my polystyrene cup. (Said cup is a result of plastic surgery going horribly wrong).

The newspaper showed a grinning picture of Bill Shankly and announced he was to be placed on a stamp. I could not have been happier if the sports editor had told me I had never to write about league reconstruction again.

Now I am not going to bore with Shankly stories that you have heard before. I am going to bore you with something different. Shankly was not the greatest manager ever, he was not the greatest Scots manager even and there is an argument, and I wince in betrayal as I make it, that he bows to Bob Paisley as the greatest Liverpool manager ever.

But he was the greatest Bill Shankly ever. His facility for the memorable phrase, his dedication to personal fitness and intellectual development and his affinity with men and women from other walks of life make him a singular, inspirational human being.

But, gloriously, he was a football man. He liked his centre-halves big, his wingers quick and his forwards sharp and accurate. He told them to pass to a player in the same shirt and not to come back in if they had not won. He flirted dangerously with becoming a caricature but he was a man of substance. He was the personality and force behind Liverpool's rise from the second division to the top of the world game. They were only knocked off their perch, long after he had gone, by a Manchester United managed by Sir Alex Ferguson, a devotee of Shankly.

His devotion to the game can be illustrated by one story. He met Ian St John when both were on holiday in Blackpool. (And doesn't that tell you everything about how far Planet Football has spun since the 1960s) and challenged him to a game on the sand. St John was one of the greatest players of his time. Shankly would not stop the game until he had beaten his player. St John lay down after he considered that his boss would persevere until the switching on of the Blackpool illuminations.

During his spell as Liverpool manager, young boys would chap on his door on a Sunday and ask his wife if Mr Shankly was coming out to play. Bill stuffed his trousers into his socks and played up front.

There is a marvellous photograph of him playing in a park match and rising to head a ball. His focus is intense, his napper is at an angle that strongly suggests the ball is going to be planted between the jerseys.

It was all about the football for Bill Shankly. He talked wisely, interminably about the game. And he never mentioned league reconstruction. No wonder I love him. I am now going for a lie down. Don't wake me after the next SPL meeting.