I was intrigued this week by a poll run by the BBC Scotland website to find the nation’s top 50 players to have pulled on a Scotland shirt.
It is, of course, an entirely subjective exercise and the results will have depended largely on the age of the respondents and which club side they happen to support.
No one could really argue with the names at the very top. Kenny Dalglish is number one and Denis Law number two. They are, without doubt, our best international players of all time and they were followed in the poll by two more legends in Graeme Souness and Danny McGrain.
But beyond that there were some eye-opening outcomes.
Andy Goram – an excellent goalkeeper – is fifth on the list, but Jim Leighton just 12th, and other Dons stars also featured way farther down than I would have anticipated.
Alex McLeish comes in at number 16 and Gordon Strachan one place lower, while Martin Buchan is in 24th place and Steve Archibald 49th, although his Aberdeen connection did not warrant even a mention.
But the one stand-out howler is Willie Miller in 13th position. The best penalty-box defender this country has ever produced does not even make the top 10. Alan Hansen does, but not Willie.
I know it is all just a bit of fun and the various online polls I have seen over the months for SPFL teams of the season have emphasised how pointless an exercise these things are, but it still rankles with me.
Contributors, among them my old pal and colleague Tom English, were also asked to select an all-time Scotland XI. Tom was clearly far too busy playing hurling as a kid to watch much of the Scottish national side as he chose a back three of McGrain, McNeill and Hansen.
Quite apart from the unbalanced nature of his defence, any such selection which does not include Miller and McLeish has to be immediately ruled out on the grounds of insanity. I will not bore you with my top 50 but here, for what it is worth, is my list of the top 10 Scotland international players in my lifetime:
1. Kenny Dalglish
2. Denis Law
3. Willie Miller
4. Danny McGrain
5. Billy Bremner
6. Graeme Souness
7. Jim Leighton
8. Davie Cooper
9. Jimmy Johnstone
10. Alex McLeish
There were plenty others I could have chosen. This exercise, if nothing else, is a reminder of the world-class talent our small country has produced down the decades.
But I found my best XI surprisingly easy. The only real decisions were on the wings where Johnstone and Cooper edged out Gordon Strachan and John Robertson.
So, my side, in a traditional 4-4-2 formation would be: Leighton; Jardine, McLeish, Miller, McGrain; Johnstone, Bremner, Souness, Cooper: Law, Dalglish.
I would back that team, with everyone playing at their peak, against most countries.
By now, had Scotland qualified, we should have been deep into Euro 2020 and new legends might have been being created.
Instead, we are a couple of months away from the Nations League kicking-off with the double-header against Israel and Czech Republic, then the crucial play-off against the Israelis to start a trio of matches in October.
Let’s hope the players can find inspiration from some of the heroes mentioned above and rise to the challenge.