You didn’t need to watch all four hours of the BBC documentary series on Scottish football to discover that the sport is mired in introspection, regret and nostalgia.
In 20 years’ time it will probably be the turn of tennis talking heads to start dissecting where it all went wrong in their world.
One of those, you suspect, will be Judy Murray. And, in her case, it won’t be wisdom after the event. Murray is already voicing her concerns that Scottish tennis is “not capitalising now on the buzz and opportunity up here”.
And she’s right.
What’s more, if Scotland returns to its tennis irrelevance in the next couple of decades you could make an argument that it will be an even greater shame than the demise of football.
Andy Murray has reached heights no Scottish footballer could manage and the buzz and opportunity Judy speaks about is all the greater for it.
It is doubtful whether a sportsman from these shores has ever been as revered and cherished as Murray. Last weekend Kenny Dalglish could have arrived into the Emirates Arena on a tandem with Sir Chris Hoy and they wouldn’t have bettered Murray’s approval rating.
For the next three or four years all most of us need to concern ourselves with is appreciating what we have, while we have it.
It will be for bureaucrats and tennis administrators to get their act together.
Three things need to happen (in ascending order of importance).
The ATP Tour event that Murray will no doubt lend his weight to, should be brought to Glasgow.
If Judy Murray’s development doesn’t get the go-ahead for near Dunblane, then people need to work together to find another location. It has to be built.
And, lastly and most significantly, of the Lawn Tennis Association’s £64 million annual budget , more than the £800,000 currently allocated to Scotland needs to find its way north of the border so a few more courts can be built in working class areas where there are none.
That hat-trick would be the legacy Andy Murray deserves.
* It doesn’t come easy offering up sympathy for a man who reportedly intended to seek out one his managerial colleagues to “break his face”.
But I’ve got some for Jose Mourinho in regards to the over-reaction to his legitimate criticism of Luke Shaw after last weekend’s Watford match.
His left-back made a mistake. Mourinho said his left-back made a mistake. End of story. To not accept the obvious and the pointing out of the obvious, would be pathetic.
In general, the failure of top level players in England to take responsibility for their performance never ceases to amaze.
There were off the record briefings coming out of United and Swansea last week about dressing room concerns over the regimes of their managers.
Is it really such a far-fetched idea that footballers might actually ask themselves “could I be doing a bit better?”
* Bernhard Langer and Paul McGinley are widely accepted to have been the best Ryder Cup captains of recent times, with Paul Azinger and his pods the only possible American contender.
Darren Clarke will outshine them all if he guides Europe to victory at Hazeltine this weekend.
Clarke had strong options with his wildcard picks but if he gets more than a point from any of Rafael Cabrera Bello, Chris Wood, Andy Sullivan and Matthew Fitzpatrick, he’ll be doing well. That has the look of a quartet that will need protected.
The Northern Irishman’s game-plan could be as near to Mark James’s of asking his big-hitters to do all of the Friday and Saturday work as we’ve seen since Brookline.
Even a slender lead going into the singles isn’t likely to be enough.
Good luck Darren. I suspect you’ll need a lot of it. The US team has far more pressure heaped on it than their opposition but it will struggle to find a way to botch this one up.
