Right, here’s a wee brain tickler to get you started. Did you know that in gauge theory, a Wilson loop is a gauge-invariant observable obtained from the holonomy of the gauge connection around a given loop?

Why, of course you did. It’s a pretty common and hum-drum topic of conversation down the local, after all. Now, can you explain how the new Uefa Nations League works? No? Oh well, back to the gauge theory.

This new addition to the international scene in the build up to the 2020 European Championships has generated mystified head-scratching on a colossal scale. The five-sheet explanation of its intricacies handed out by the SFA had the football writers gazing at said document with the kind of bamboozled, vacant stares you would get if you plonked a Doberman in front of the controls of a light aircraft.

In a nutshell, the Nations League, which will have its inaugural draw in Switzerland on Wednesday, will give friendly matches much greater meaning with a place in the European Championship finals available to the winners of a play-off.

Those of a more pessimistic outlook, of course, will grumble that this will merely provide yet another opportunity for Scotland to mess up a qualifying campaign and go out in a blaze of unluckiness.

The 55 national teams of Europe will be split into four leagues based on world rankings. Scotland, lumped in with the sides bracketed between numbers 25 to 39 on the global pecking order, will be in League C and could come up against such teams as Hungary, Serbia, Israel and Albania. Another name that could get plucked out of the hat is Estonia.

For Jackie McNamara, that is a name that stirs the senses, for obvious and peculiar reasons. The one team in Tallinn palaver will forever be etched in the Scottish football record books.

In 1996, the Scots travelled to the Estonian capital for a World Cup qualifier which never was as a dispute between Fifa and the hosts led to Estonia simply not turning up. Scotland kicked off and the referee blew the final whistle.

“I have mixed feelings about that game to be honest,” reflected McNamara. “It was meant to be my first international start. I had already made my debut away in Latvia. So I was buzzing that I was starting the game but the elation turned to deflation because they never turned up.

“You make a joke about it afterwards that I never put a foot wrong in the game, which doesn’t happen very often. As much as it was a farce, for me personally it was disappointing.”

From that comical episode, Scotland and McNamara ploughed on to the World Cup finals in France 1998. It has been no laughing matter since then, though. Two decades have now passed since the nation’s men last graced a major championship.

“I was obviously one of the younger ones and we were maybe a bit kind of blasé whereas, for a lot of the older ones, it was their last chance to be involved in a campaign,” he said. “We just all thought there would be more chances to play at that level. My friends and family all came over. I remember seeing them all after the second game which was Norway in Bordeaux.

“My dad, my uncles, everyone with their kilts on enjoying it. I was half thinking I would like to be beside them but I would like to be playing as well.

“It would be nice to go to one of the tournaments as a supporter rather than watching other nations on the telly. It’s been too long.”

Scotland have a friendly double-header with Costa Rica and Hungary in March. Michael O’Neill could be at the helm by then and McNamara would certainly be a contented man.

“Look at the two squads and which players from the Northern Ireland team would get in the Scotland team?,” he said. “ I think it is an attractive job and I can’t see why we can’t do well.”