While extending the international hand of friendship is admirable the SFA surely passed some boundaries with their help to Lincoln Red Imps ahead of facing Celtic tomorrow.
Providing some red ash pitches or getting them a couple of hours training at Toryglen or Ravenscraig would have been fine but handing over the luxury of Mar Hall to a team aiming to knock a member of the SFA out of Europe is too much.
Despite the handicap of paying every penny due to HMRC Celtic have helped the Scottish game enormously down the years with their European exploits.
Reaching the group phase of the Champions League puts £100,000 into the coffers of every top flight club while co-efficient points allow more Scottish teams to experience European games for themselves.
Against this background Lincoln Red Imps have revealed the the SFA’s Head of Football Development, Jim Fleeting, has been doing his bit for football development in Gibraltar.
Speaking to The Express Imps assistant manager Mick McElwee said: “We’re grateful to Jim for helping us arrange this.
“We had rung round a few teams looking for facilities and were struggling to come up with any. But Jim was able to sort out Mar Hall, which is ideal. We decided to come over to Scotland a day early to prepare for this match as we didn’t want to feel rushed.
“The idea is to get the players focused and relaxed ahead of a massive game. We’re a humble club so we travelled on a Jet2 flight from Malaga. We were getting good luck messages from Rangers fans and booed and whistled by Celtic fans but it was all in good fun.”
Handing training facilities over to a club playing your city rivals is par for the course, when the national association are helping out a team playing an SFA member it becomes a very different matter.
CLICK HERE for Five young Celt’s ready for the Champions League.