SHE had been urged to “do a Chris Hoy” and wave the Saltire with one hand, but Eilidh Doyle made history her own way yesterday by becoming the first Scotswoman to lead her country out at the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Australia’s Gold Coast City.

Watching the scenes one could not help but think back to that July evening in Glasgow in 2014. While the memory may be playing tricks, I fancy it was warm. The streets were quiet, with many watching the opening ceremony on television. Nine million tuned in across the UK, one billion worldwide. Huw Edwards, who doesn’t get out of bed for less than a national disaster or an international summit, had been flown in from London to present the coverage.

Glaswegians being Glaswegians, we were half expecting a mortifying fiasco with tartan knobs on. Hogmanay Live meets Black Mirror. But blow us down with a feather from a George Square pigeon if if it was not really rather good in a knitted-by-yer-granny-with-love way. From the dancing teacakes to the Scottie dogs, a great time was had by all, that night and across the next two weeks. What fools we were.

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What we failed to spot in the Parade of Nations was Team Assessor, toting not flags and flowers but calculators and surveys. Four years on, on the eve of the 2018 Commonwealth Games opening, TA delivered their assessment. We shall let a selection of headlines tell the story: “Games failed to make Scots more active”; “How Games left NO legacy”; “Games had little impact on sports participation”; and so on.

In short, in failing to get Scotland off its backside and exercising more, the 2014 Games have been deemed a big fat failure. A fair cop or another case of Scotland looking at a half full glass and suspecting whatever is in there has been flavoured with hemlock?

The report by Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government on the Games’ legacy was not all bad news. From 2014-17, preparation and delivery boosted Scotland’s economy by £740 million (£390 million going Glasgow’s way), with more than 2000 jobs a year supported. The capital cost was £543 million (£425 million coming from the Scottish Government and city council and the rest raised through sponsorship and ticket sales). Moreover, the venues built or improved for the Games have since played host to 57 major events, each of them bringing more money and visitors to the city, and the houses built for athletes to spend a few weeks in have since become permanent homes for families.

Any fair assessment would call all that a win. Imagine if the figures had been reversed, Mr Micawber-style, with income of £543 million and capital costs of £740 million. Result: misery and an official inquiry.

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For all that, the Games did not deliver on a large part of what they set out to do: make Scotland healthier and let Glaswegians in particular flourish. Nicola Sturgeon, then Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, said a key aim the Games was to encourage people to make “lasting lifestyle changes”.

But this week’s report concluded that there had been no “step change” in levels of physical activity in Scotland. In Glasgow’s East End, among those living near the expensive new venues, participation has risen by not very much (1% for children) or fallen back (53% of adults were physically active in 2016 and 62% in 2012). So much for legacy.

It looks as though Glasgow, that postcode patchwork quilt of a city where the well-off live next door to the obscenely poor, is operating true to form. All mod cons venues have been built, but the only people using them more are those who were already taking exercise. One expensive running shoe clad step forward for them, two steps back for the folk in the supermarket trainers. Was it not always thus?

Asked about the Emirates Arena on London Road, locals knew about it, but for many that was the extent of their engagement. “Although this group saw it as a positive landmark and attraction for their neighbourhood,” said the report, “few had visited it, citing a lack of knowledge and perceived high costs as their reasons”.

Strewth: A Gold Coast diary

More could have been done to encourage people to use the venues after the Games were over. Glasgow did a great job selling itself and its new facilities to the world, but locally the message did not get across. Could a special fund have been started to offer locals free membership, or further reductions than there are to date? The concessionary rate to join Glasgow Club, which operates gyms and fitness classes at the Emirates and in 21 other places across the city, is £23.50 a month. Relatively little compared to private gyms, but a lot out of a low income. How easy, anyway, is it to take exercise if you are working more than one job to make ends meet?

Here we race closer to the heart of the problem. It was always toweringly ambitious, make that the stuff of fantasy politics, to expect that two weeks in 2014 were going to make a significant difference to the health problems of poorer Glaswegians that have been decades – centuries, even – in the making. That, however, is no reason to despair. If we look closer, there might even be cause to take heart. Ian Beattie, the chair of Scottish Athletics, reckons there has been a big increase in the numbers competing and joining clubs; new people and younger ones. Bounce Back 2 Netball, which started after the Games, says there has been a “huge” lift in participation.

For all that we should crunch the numbers after spending public money, we should also realise that there are some things that cannot be quantified or easily discerned.

We might never know, for example, how many young Scots got that crucial first job from the 2014 Games. We are not the Gold Coast, with its 300 days of sunshine; more like the Brass Monkey Coast. But for those two weeks in July we did okay. We did more than okay. We built a games and people came from all over the world to enjoy them. The venues are still there. Let’s get more Glaswegians through the doors.