THE most popular post-Olympics sport is soul-searching.

I sense it is about an anxiety over what we witnessed in the last couple of weeks as being only some chimera that will now slip our understanding and lead us into a false prospectus for the future. Although No.10 has no direct influence on what happens north of the border, you have to be cautious about any politician floating an idea that can set others in the wrong direction, in seeking to outdo one another. Even bad ideas can be infectious. We should be on alert with our own Glasgow Games now in our consciousness.

Cameron being hooked on to the podium syndrome with his call for more competitive sports in primary schools is a classic knee-jerk political reaction and the fact that these pronouncements have been backed by Michael Gove who, in a short period in office, has done more U-turns that a canoe slalomist, does not encourage the belief that this thinking is based on cool, rational analysis.

But even in Scotland there are vibrant debates about this concept of competition.

It requires definition. My understanding of it started in a Glasgow backcourt over a game called 'kick-the-can'. The can would be placed near dustbins which with only a slight effort of the imagination could either be transformed into the goalposts at Wembley or Nazi generals facing a death squad armed with broken bottles. The object was firstly to hide and then run like the neighbour's greyhounds to kick the can before the guard or anybody else could stop you.

The deliberate tripping, pushing and ankle-tapping of opponents in the rush to the can would have been considered in a sporting glossary of the time, as 'techniques of merit'. And my recollection is that nobody wept, winner or loser. Although we were certainly not conscious of any deeper meanings, it probably had something to do with the development, not just of self-survival, but of that most useful adjunct, self-awareness.

However, there is little doubt that winning was better. So that competitive urge was transferred into the football matches, sometimes of up to 15-a-side, where esprit de corps was guaranteed if you picked the biggest boy in the neighbourhood to be on your side so that goal-line disputes were settled by the girth of his forearms rather than by that little known phrase 'fair play'.

Young Cameron would not have had that kind of sporting upbringing, of course, although elements of the Eton Wall game might have been uncannily related to skirmishes around a can.

For long this led me to believe that ruthlessness, deviousness, the 'winning isn't everything; it's the only thing' philosophy of the late Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers was of great virtue if you wanted to succeed in team games.

Then, as a teacher refereeing primary-school matches, I sampled the basic error of that belief at that developmental level. Growth and development of skills was being stunted as on the sidelines were screaming banshees called parents who had little interest in the nuances of the sport but were simply cheerleaders for 'kick and rush' football. 'Get it up the park,' with additional adjectives, is a phrase that still haunts. Then, some years later, after finishing a premier division commentary at Fir Park, I was astonished to see two schools coming out to contest the country primary-schools final, looking like little fleas unable to control the ball properly on the same pitch used by the professionals.

This craziness had to stop. Largely it has. Seven-a-side football at the earlier stages became a healthy norm. But the trend towards non-competitive sport went too far, however well-intentioned the SFA's schemes for youth development were to stop this nonsense. Medals and cups were then talked about as if they would lead youths into lives of dissolution.

In a book I wrote in 2004, Flower of Scotland?, I warned about the clumsiness of this policy, at the same time as I predicted Rangers financial downfall, incidentally. Nobody paid a blind bit of attention to either of these views as the book certainly did not fly off the bookshelves and was, as far as I am aware, outsold by such as Haematology for Beginners.

Eight years later the SFA still frowns on the presentation of rewards. It reminds me that a man called Skinner once taught pigeons to play a piano by offering rewards to them. Kids are not pigeons but they like a sweetie or two at times when they have done well.

Indeed a kind of Stalinist grip on the process of youth football seemed to have been exerted when, for example, an SFA community coach in Fife told the organiser of a tournament there that he could not attend because to do so where medals and cups were being presented would put him out of favour. Yet, at the same time, Walter Smith ,the national team manager at the time, declared his belief that the most important aspect was simply to get boys playing the game at all, and as often as possible, medals or no medals.

We all do, as morning to evening street fitba' is now a rarity. Smith's view is understandable, as was the HMI Inspector of Schools report then, on improving physical education in schools, in declaring, "When handled well, competition motivated pupils to try harder and seek new strategies for solutions, thereby raising the levels of achievement."

It is about balance. This will not be easy to achieve. The rational policy that any politician has to pursue is encouraging participation in all kinds of physical activities; not by diktat, but by helping schools create the kind of environment which is enlightened enough even to allow kids who hate sports not to be deemed freaks, but at the same time as presenting the unassailable fact that a healthy mind in a healthy body is even more relevant today as it was to the ancient Greek philosopher who coined the idea.