We will never be the same. But what would change?

I believe that is even more necessary now. Indeed, this will apply to other areas of Scottish life if independence proves to be the democratic will. The rebirth of a nation presents a blank canvas, a unique opportunity to reassess priorities, restructure and discard unwanted baggage.

Sportscotland assure us of their readiness to "hit the ground running" should Scotland vote for independence. They have had discussions with Holyrood, outlining funding issues in detail and measures to continue current investment levels. They believe that, since sport is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, little would change. They say grassroots sport - in clubs, schools and colleges, community and leisure centres - will experience negligible impact. They acknowledge, though, that elite sport, currently funded at UK level, would operate in a new environment.

Measures to look after athletes already on UK funding are already drawn up, they assure us.

Now, in the event of a No vote, Westminster is apparently offering greater autonomy. So, whether Yes or No, the need for an independent government commission on sport's future remains.

"Independent" should mean just that. Sportscotland has too much invested in the status quo to be part of the assessment process, other than to present evidence. Likewise Commonwealth Games Scotland, who may have ambitions of becoming the Scottish Olympic Association. The Commonwealth Games would become marginalised in the event of independence. The Olympics would become the priority for Scots competitors.

A Scottish Olympic Association should be very much more than a Games Council with extra bureaucrats. We trust an independent commission of inquiry would have the vision to acknowledge that.

Only 14 Olympic sports were involved in Glasgow 2014. The total number of summer and winter Olympic sports is 41: a huge leap, not least financially. CGS's qualifications to deal on such a broad front require evaluation.

An independent commission should consider all options, all sports, the future of elite performance, funding and sport's over-arching, potentially multi-faceted, role in society. Not to mention the functions of sportscotland, the CGS and establishment of an Olympic body.

It should consider how sport, education, health and social inclusion agendas best intermesh, then how to fund it to deliver the optimum result. Should elite sport be pruned or sacrificed to achieve that? Perhaps money from health and education should come to sport, given the potential new roles.

Sportscotland received £80m in 2012/13, and slightly more than a third went to performance sport. An inquiry may feel so much of the total budget going to so few to be inappropriate.

In a tight fiscal climate post-independence, sport risks being a low priority. There is no doubt that medals generated a feelgood factor post London 2012 and Glasgow 2014, but it came at a price: one which an independent inquiry may decide a new Scotland can ill afford.

Sportscotland say they would have some £27m a year to invest annually in performance sport once adjustments are made to include the £7.5m which Scotland contributes to UK Sport. That's £108m in any four-year Olympic and Paralympic cycle, which a quango spokesman states is "commensurate with the levels of Team GB, which globally are considered very high".

Existing Lottery arrangements would continue irrespective of a Yes vote because the licence is not due for renegotiation until 2023.

Whether an independent commission would agree that elite funding represents best value is open to challenge, despite the feelgood factor.

Is it right that almost £7m has been invested on Scotland's rugby team over eight years, excluding the Commonwealth Games sevens squad? Ditto professional football.

I was already sceptical about professional sport receiving public money. Now, if elite funding were to come under threat, I would first look at under-performing professional sports, before amateur team sport. And these two punch way below the weight of, for example, judo and swimming.

It is a fact that in netball, rugby sevens and men's and women's hockey, Scotland has never been involved in a match which, had they won, would have resulted in a Commonwealth medal.

Yet in the last eight years, more than £8m has been invested in them by sportscotland.

Since the London Olympics, Great Britain basketball and volleyball have had their funding cut by UK Sport for under-performance. UK Sport is precisely the type of body whose personnel might be considered appropriate to feature in an independent commission process.

Such a commission would have to consider whether elite performance funding can be better spent. What might be the outcomes for Scotland's health if every primary and secondary school delivered daily physical education for every pupil, with every child steered into a sport, any sport, for life? How much might that reduce NHS bills on treating obesity and related conditions like coronary disease, diabetes, high blood-pressure and cancer? What impact might an extra £100m every four years, have on that?

Potentially revolutionary recommendations may be made, and dramatic conclusion drawn.

I hope they would include appointment of a sports minister with cabinet clout, rather than sport merely as an extra portfolio tagged on to others already held.

The appropriate imaginative decisions could make Scotland the envy of the world, but some will inevitably be unpalatable. Scrapping, or radically reducing, elite funding for the few in order to benefit the masses would be radical in the extreme, but must be considered.

It would be a time to reassess priorities, redefine our future. Birth pangs would be painful, yet, if I have learned anything in 46 years as a sportswriter, it is that those who succeed are those who are fascinated by the process, and not just by the end result. The athletes and coaches who are obsessed by the significance of what they get from each and every training session, by their diet, their medical back-up, achieve most.

Every nut and bolt of the package is constantly refined, based on attention to detail and forensic analysis followed by modification and application of best practice.

This is the ethos of the greatest athletes. It should be the ethos of an aspirational nation. It could be the greatest lesson sport has to teach a new Scotland. Every aspect of where sport fits in our national tapestry, every stitch, needs reappraisal.

ONE of the great sporting red herrings of the referendum debate has been the attempt by some to suggest that Scottish independence would somehow interfere with the Lions - rugby's vast revenue generator.

The proper identity of the team which now tours on four yearly cycles is the British & Irish Lions, which is often overlooked by mainland commentators,

For all that Lions selection is understandably viewed as the ultimate affirmation of a rugby player's status within these islands, the team has nothing to do with international sporting competition in any meaningful sense.

Their tours are a sporting circus, beloved by the countries they visit because of the boost they offer their coffers and the psychological boost they offer in terms of, more often than not, beating four potential World Cup rivals in one.

Far from a national side, the Lions is a brand which has long accommodated players from a separate independent country, and will do so again if Scotland becomes a separate state and could even, with the sort of imagination golf's European Tour demonstrated 30-odd years ago, be adapted further to become a trans-continental team, thus offering involvement to the leading nations that currently miss out on the jamboree.

The confusion generated by those seeking to make political capital from such scaremongering, however, steers us towards some of the issues that may affect Scottish sport in the case of a vote for independence and the potential emotions they seek to arouse through sport.

Broadly speaking - the Lions aside, along with some amateur sports, notably golf, where Great Britain & Ireland still form alliances - there are three categories to consider:

l those sports where teams or individuals compete solely under the banner of Scotland in the international arena;

l those in which they compete solely under the Great Britain/United Kingdom banner; and

l those where they compete under both.

In the case of the first, a Yes vote would clearly have minimal, if any, impact, other than to permit those sports, notably football and rugby, to compete on a level playing field with all the other sports governing bodies for what public funding may be available.

It is where the 'British' element comes into play that there is more of an issue. The benefits of being British have been evangelised by the likes of Chris Hoy who believes that, just as Andy Murray did when moving to Spain, he would not have been able to achieve what he did without moving out of Scotland.

Yet the decision to make that move to Manchester in the 1990s is understood to have owed at least as much to the initiative taken by Craig MacLean, his long-time team-mate, than any systemised talent identification programme on the part of British cycling administrators who were offering opportunities to Scottish youngsters.

For individuals, such as Murray - or, for that matter, Mo Farah - it would be foolish to confine themselves either to Scottish or British programmes if superior facilities and development systems exist elsewhere.

Where the team element enters the equation, it becomes yet more complicated. It can reasonably be argued that Eilidh Child might have less chance of an Olympic medal if she cannot be part of a British relay team. Yet that is the equivalent of inviting Belgians to ask their governments to go cap in hand to France in order to improve their chances, or Austrians to Germany.

Then, of course, there are the examples of Scottish athletes who come under pressure from those running pan-British programmes to uproot from the area where they live in order to have access to top-class support systems.

That was highlighted most recently in the case of two of Britain's leading badminton players, Imogen Bankier and Kirsty Gilmour, both of whom won Commonwealth Games medals having, at different stages, withdrawn from the Great Britain programme.

Google information on the British badminton programme and you will find it as a sub-section of Badminton England. Insert the words "Imogen Bankier withdraws from GB programme" as the search and what comes up is not any concern about her decision, but a string of articles under the Badminton England banner explaining how GB Badminton offered support to her former partner Chris Adcock when the Glaswegian decided to head home in 2012.

That Gilmour, Britain's No.1 and the best singles player Scotland has produced, felt the need to do the same because she saw competing in a Commonwealth Games in her home city as a greater priority than did those running the programme, was perhaps even more telling.

Some will feel that the way Peter Nicol was lured from Scotland - when already the best player in the world - is a warning as to what could happen more widely should Thursday's referendum result in independence, given the way that English sports administrators, who already use, and perhaps abuse, residency rules to a ridiculous extent.

Yet sportsmen and women have always competed under flags of convenience in pursuit of improved opportunities.

What is of greater concern is when being British becomes an impediment.

An extreme example of that occurred 11 years ago. At a time when it was felt in Scottish hockey circles that the Great Britain programme was biased in favour of English players, Laurence Docherty, who hails from Scotland's capital, applied for Dutch citizenship in order to pursue his international dreams. He ultimately made his point emphatically by winning international honours in a country that boasts a hockey culture superior to that in Britain.

The worst cases, though, are those where it is not just a matter of Scottish athletes being overlooked but where the international federations recognise that, because of the importance of team dynamics, Britain will merely be represented at events like Olympic Games by what is considered the best of the component national teams.

Which brings us back to rugby union again. Unlikely as the prospect might seem just now, the fact is that, in event of a No vote, a Scot could be recognised as one of the best sevens players in the world come the Rio Olympics, but would have little chance of taking part because the England team would have won the spot by virtue of their place in the world rankings.

There are, then, pros and cons to both arguments, but perhaps the greatest con of all is to seek to suggest that, through being eligible for both, our sportspeople ever had the best of both worlds.