Well, I've finally given up on running onto the rugby pitch at Murrayfield as a Scotland International. It's not that I'm way too old, or that I was never that good a player. I hope my ex-team mates won't take this badly but the Highland 4th XV was made up of has-beens and never-will-bees; I was one of the never-wills. No, the final nail in the coffin of my hopes of an international cap is that you don't have to be Scottish to play for Scotland any more. I think there have always been folk playing rugby for countries they had no real connection with; was not a Polish nobleman played for England before the Second World War? And even in my day I think there were some fellahs from the Antipodes turning out for Scotland on the strength of a Scottish great grandmother, or was it a granny? Anyway, nowadays which country a man plays rugby for has very little to do with any real connection with it. I guess it's part of the professionalisation and commercialisation of the game. The international fixtures attract big TV audiences and that means every country wants to field the best team possible. That seems to mean these days that the audience can't foisted off with a load of haddies selected simply because they were born in Old Scotia. But I don't really feel comfortable being represented by a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis who can't get a game in their own country and may be only temporary residents of Scotland. The only commonality we might share is drinking in the same pubs decades apart. Perhaps the time has come to drop the sham "national" teams and just have a worldwide super-league featuring teams with names like the Pumas, the Walleroos or the Warriors.