BACK in the days when jackets and jerseys were piled up to form goalposts, and the guy who owned a football was always guaranteed a game, there were frequent, unofficial derby days in the area where I was brought up. The players were divided up into teams from a clutch of council houses and residences that were regarded as 'posher'. It was not a deliberate sociological clash - although with hindsight it sounds

exactly that - more a question of geography because of how this part of town was laid out.

Anyway, the result was matches that were decided on a basis of simple arithmetic - the kind of thing where when five goals were scored it was half-time and the winner was the first to reach 11 goals. These games - obviously played without the benefit of timepieces or modern devices such as time added on - could easily become epics. They were also rarely fought out on the basis of 11-a-side and there was also the occasional presence of a girl or two in the teams. It wasn't considered a big deal. Then they were called tomboys and they played because they wanted to and were good enough.

Since those short-trousered days, of course, female football has practically become commonplace. We're told that many youngsters in America play and, as we saw in the women's World Cup, their game can produce a fair bit of glamour and excitement. That shouldn't be too much of a surprise, however, since it has been clear for ages that female footballers should be taken seriously and indeed that Scotland has produced players with impressive skills.

I recall that during the early stages of the fairer sex gaining recognition for their participation in the sport that a club in the Ayrshire town of Stewarton was - in fact it may still be - a source of gifted girl footballers. Some were so good that they were lira-lured to Italy to play in their leagues.

These memories started to drift back in mid-week, as I slumped in an armchair in front of the television, trying to shake off the gloom that had descended at a chilly Rugby Park, as an abysmal, artless Hearts side had been dumped by Kilmarnock from the quarter-final of the CIS Insurance Cup.

At one point, in the preparation of this column, it would have been tempting to quip that thoughts of women's football had occurred because I'd just been distressed by what another supporter in our section of the Killie stadium had proclaimed to be ''a bunch of big lassies'' in maroon. But the hopelessness of that Hearts performance has been forgotten and forgiven by the unexpected joy - no, make that ecstasy - that they gave me on Saturday at Celtic Park and, in actual fact, the real reason for considering the female game was 'The Return of Third Lanark', a programme in the BBC Scotland Ex-S documentary series.

The television cameras had focused on what you might term the grass roots of the sport as a disparate group of girls - their number included a tax officer, a solicitor's cashier, a nursery teacher, and a symphony percussionist - united to bring the name of Third Lanark back from the dead. They played basement soccer in the third division of the Scottish Women's Football League and to be brutally honest, it would be easy to mock their efforts. During the course of the documentary there were shots of some of them dragging on fags at the interval, larking about in the mud as they waited in the rain for the visiting team to turn up, embarrassing defeats - one scoreline was 15-1 - were catalogued and there was a growing conflict between players and manager which eventually led to his resignation.

But what was significant about the documentary was that these girls - just like the tomboys of my youth - really wanted to play football. You couldn't doubt their enthusiasm. So what if they didn't look much like players, although winning is glorious, it isn't everything.

Mind you, it did feel like absolutely everything round about 4.45 pm on Saturday - particularly since I was almost a lone Hearts celebrant among the corporate hospitality guests in the Celtic Park directors box - thanks very much for the invite, Brian Gilda.

Forgive me if it seems that by returning to that already touched upon topic that I am verging on gloating about the manner in which Hearts went from zeroes to heroes and overcame a two-goal deficit to emerge victorious from Parkhead. It's simply a clear case of enjoying your moment in the sun because Saturday's win is the sort of event that doesn't happen very often.

The girls of Third Lanark, I'm sure, would understand.