It's not about me, me, me
The truth of the matter is that, for some years now, the break from domestic football to accomodate international matches has been regarded as an an annoying waste of time.
Not many people care about Scotland's under-achieving national team and especially not when they interrupt the growing tension of a Premiership title race involving Celtic and Rangers.
It is a two week break few care for because it is the equivalent of football shutting down as opposed to another element of the game opening up for inspection.
And nothing that happened at Hampden on Sunday will have altered that state of affairs.
San Marino's incompetence means they make a mockery of professional football and renders anything done against them as being virtually meaningless.
But I will admit to a hypocritical dimension to any argument where Steve Clarke's side are concerned.
Those who view international football as an impediment to the season's progress reserve the right to think that way until Scotland go pear shaped, at which point those unsympathetic to international football suddenly go over the top in protest.
The most bizarre of all the notions, suggestions and observations attached to Scotland in the wake of the hammering in Moscow which sent their approval rate tumbling is the one about disbanding the team altogether.
In other words, suggesting the SFA write to FIFA and inform them we no longer wish to play international football because defeat is an embarrassment so great it is starting to interfere with the self-esteem of the fans.
It is an idea growing in appeal for some and articulated by one caller to Superscoreboard on Friday night.
A gentlemen who said he was now too self-conscious to wear his Scotland strip on holiday for fear of ridicule.
It would appear to be the case that Scotland's very obvious failings and Clarke's monumental task in trying to make the best of a bad job is of secondary importance to individual considerations.
It is all about me, me, me instead of them, them, them for disheartened and disillusioned supporters.
But it is surely the case that defeat is part and parcel of the game?
With good there must come bad and all that kind of stuff.
If teams had to be disbanded in the aftermath of embarrassing results would Rangers not have turned up their toes by the time Pedro Caixinha had gone rubbery in the shrubbery in Luxembourg while also finding new ways of being humiliated in games against Celtic?
Would Celtic themselves not have agreed it was best to withdraw from European football when the likes of Barcelona and PSG started sticking seven goals behind them in an ungentlemanly show of superiority?
I am, in case there be any doubt, being sarcastic, but since when did people start measuring their self-worth by how well, or poorly, a football team was playing?
If your team losing makes you grumpy and endangers the safety of the family pet when you get home from the match then that is a traditional norm.
But to be afraid of drawing un-wanted attention to yourself by wearing a Scotland strip in parts foreign because it damages your self-esteem?
Do me a favour.
England fans in Prague on Friday night gleefully sang a song about Scotland getting 'Battered' everywhere we go.
This was twenty-four hours after we had been mauled in Moscow and just before England were beaten by the Czech Republic, leaving ITV's match commentator Clive Tyldsley sounding like someone who had suffered a bereavement.
That's how it works in football.
Shout your mouth off but understand that, one day or night, you might get bitten in a more sensitive part of the anatomy if your luck turns.
But whatever you do, you do not disband a national team because results are bad.
Being old brings certain advantages.
I well remember 1967, when Celtic and Rangers each made it to a European final in the same season, and with two sides made up entirely of outstanding Scottish players.
Denis Law, Scotland's joint top record goalscorer, was also in his pomp at that time down the road at Manchester United.
But, twelve months earlier, he and the players from the Old Firm had been party to a failure to make the World Cup finals in England.
And, for years after that, we again failed to qualify for the World Cup finals in Mexico.
But for the life of me I can't recall anyone ever suggesting we should disband the national team and withdraw from international football.
The customer is king, as was shown by the size of the crowd at Hampden on Sunday. The customer withdraws his, or her, custom if they don't like what's on offer.
You wouldn't watch San Marino if they were playing in your back garden. You certainly would not, under any circumstances, pay £27 a pop for a ticket to see them here in a qualifying group that is no longer any of Scotland's business.
But disband the national team because you can't bear the thought of total strangers looking down their noses at you and your strip