If proponents of chaos theory and the butterfly effect are to be believed, Peter Weir rather than George Burley could have become the next manager of the Scottish national team.

If proponents of chaos theory and the butterfly effect are to be believed, Peter Weir rather than George Burley could have become the next manager of the Scottish national team.

Weir was winding down a distinguished career as a winger of some repute with St Mirren, Aberdeen and Leicester City when he moved to Ayr United in 1990. Within a year, the legendary Ally MacLeod had stepped down as manager for the third and final time.

Weir was interviewed for the vacancy, confidently believing he would soon be following MacLeod into the manager's office at Somerset Park. Instead, the Ayr board of directors chose to pluck Burley from Motherwell as their preferred choice as the club's new player/manager.

Two years cutting his teeth in the competitive if unglamorous world of first division football then followed, setting in motion the chain of events that would lead the former Scotland internationalist back to Hampden Park. If one small incident can indeed alter the course of future events, like the fabled butterfly causing a hurricane with one flap of its wings, then Weir has no regrets about what might have been if he, rather than Burley, had been handed the reins 17 years ago.

He recalled: "I had applied for the job when MacLeod stood down and it came down to me and George at the end. At one point driving away from an interview in Ayr, I actually thought I had the job. But George got it instead and I had no real problem with that. We worked well together until I had to quit with an ankle injury.

"He spoke to me a lot about things when he first came to Ayr as I had been there for eight months or so before he came in. He wanted to know a few things and I was happy to help and we got on fine. I had met up with him in the early 1980s with the Scotland national team and we got on fine. He's an honest guy. He worked his players hard and had an impressive knowledge of the game."

Two undistinguished seasons at Somerset Park gave little indication of the success Burley would enjoy later in his managerial career and he was sacked after Ayr finished sixth and then seventh in successive seasons. Weir believes his former manager was up against it trying to bring success to a club with limited resources but had seen enough to envisage Burley going on to enjoy future success as a coach.

"These jobs at small clubs are always hard," said Weir. "There's never any budget or many players to choose from. He tried to change things around and bring in different players but it was always a big ask. You normally hear managers saying they need five years to turn things around and George only got two so he did well in the time he was given. I wasn't surprised, though, when he went on to have success at Ipswich Town, as it was a bigger club with a bigger budget and more money to spend."

Weir, now operating as assistant director of Aberdeen's youth academy Glasgow branch, has close ties with many of the names linked with the national team in recent times. A Gothenburg Great alongside Mark McGhee in 1983, Weir also played with Billy Stark, the new Scotland Under-21 coach, at St Mirren and Aberdeen and worked with Tommy Burns during a spell at Celtic.

The former winger believes that in Burley, Stark and Gordon Smith, the Scottish FA chief executive, the future of the national side is in good hands.

"Billy is a very good friend of mine. He did a great job at Queen's Park and I think he and George will work well together. They're both honest people which is the most important thing.

"The experience that George has had with different clubs, Billy with Celtic, Kilmarnock and Queen's Park, and Gordon Smith, with the knowledge he's built up throughout his life, should stand Scotland in good stead."