Stewart Fisher: Get on board with the Scotland's women team ... they have put us on the march again

But there were other diverting details too. The desolation of Scotland’s Alta Gracia base camp near Cordoba, where the team bus broke down on the final hill of a 22-hour journey - the team eventually arriving to a partially-finished hotel, a swimming pool with no water, and a rutted training field which sparked an outbreak of ankle injuries. Or an entertainments programme which saw our isolated, bored lads left firing pebbles at a colony of leafcutter ants climbing up a wall.

However spectacularly things deteriorated after they arrived, it occurred to me as I watched that programme that the joy and excitement of Ally McLeod’s Argentinian adventure has been posted missing from our national game for far too long. So it was great to be transported back to that sense of hope on Tuesday whilst watching the footage of Scotland’s women’s team qualifying for next summer’s World Cup in France for the first time. Firstly, let’s hope the SFA have a more comfortable training base looked out.

International football for a nation like Scotland actively requires a leap of faith. What right have we, a nation of little more than five million, to mix it on the world stage against footballing heavyweights like holders USA, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Sweden and England? Well, tell that to Iceland, whose exploits in the men’s game spring from a paltry 300,000 population.

While Shellley Kerr’s Scotland next summer won’t make the same mistake as the men’s team did back in 1978 by believing the competition is theirs to lose, you can only play eleven players at any one time and if you have a talented, well-organised, bunch of players with access to club football at the highest level, you always have half a chance. Put pressure on and other teams, like Switzerland in qualifying, might just fold.

Much like Scotland’s men’s side in 1978, Kerr can already call upon plenty of players operating at the sharp end of this fast-developing sport. Lisa Evans has moved on from Bayern Munich to join Kim Little at Arsenal, Erin Cuthbert is a 20-year-old with the world at her feet at Chelsea, Lizzie Arnot stars for the new Manchester United team and Jane Ross is as much of a Manchester City goal machine as Sergio Aguero. Beneath that there young players making their way in the Scottish system while Lana Clelland plays her football in Italy, much like Scotland’s previous World Cup winner, Kilmarnock-born Rose Reilly, who did so in the colours of Italy.

Yet you are only ever as strong as your weakest link, and if ever there is a sport in this country which is still only starting to scratch the surface of its potential I feel it is women’s football.

Lucky enough to be in the Gaalgenward Stadium in Utrecht for Scotland’s first-ever European Championships match (even if it ended in a humbling 6-0 defeat) it has seemed to me for a while now that women’s football is well-placed in this country for an explosion.

Women have been playing football here for centuries - it was only a fortnight ago we celebrated the 390th anniversary of the first women’s match, played on Carstairs Village Green on the Sabbath under the disapproving eye of the local kirk – and the truth is that anybody out there who is still disparaging about the idea of women playing this sport (in some cases outperforming the men) are the ones being left behind. Most fathers I know love their daughters playing football. Women’s football is coming and whether it is clubs scheduling matches around men’s games or SFA looking into central contracts, Scottish football is missing a trick if we fail to do everything we can to facilitate this part of the sport.

Female footballers will ever claim the exorbitant salaries in the men’s game. But commercial opportunities are out there. The FA down in England give 30 players deals worth £30,000 and whatever proceeds which come from our trip to France should be re-invested into the women’s game. It is thanks to them that Scotland are on the march again.