Graeme Souness would have booted his Grannie for Scotland so if he's backing Ukraine there is an issue - Keith Jackson

Now the moment is almost upon them, the unpalatable reality of what Scotland ’s players are about to confront begins to bite.

A match they have waited all their lives to win, set against a blood-stained backdrop of human suffering that renders the very idea of victory so hollow it might even seem like an act of callous inhumanity.

A pathway to the pinnacle of their childhood dreams, blocked by the ultimate no-win scenario of attempting to give the proud people of Ukraine a reason to feel ever so slightly worse about their current, unimaginable predicament.

Put it this way, when someone as patriotic and as fiercely competitive as Graeme Souness admits he’d rather sit this one out, it does beg the question about the conflicting emotions in the hearts and minds of those who must carry the burden of pulling on those dark blue shirts.

In his own days Souness would have shoulder-charged his own granny to the ground to win a kickabout down the local park.

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But now a man who represented Scotland at three World Cup finals can’t bring himself to wish more ill will upon a nation that has been so ravaged and brutalised by Vladimir Putin’s war machine over these past three months.

But, while it’s difficult,