Hugh Keevins: Beware of jumping to conclusions

If jumping to conclusions was ever to be made an Olympic sport then Scottish football fans would soon assemble more gold medals than Team GB won in Brazil.

So it's best to stay grounded over the 5 goals Gordon Strachan's side got in Malta to kick start Scotland's World Cup qualification campaign.

Many congratulations to the manager, who must have been aware of the pre-match suggestions from a variety of quarters that a flop against Group F's minnows would have put his position under threat.

And many congratulations also to hat-trick scorer Robert Snodgrass, who has felt like an extended member of the Keevins family ever since my daughter taught him at school in the East End of Glasgow.

But assumptions are dangerous and the most dangerous of all is that Sunday night's result means we have come out of the international cul de sac we've been in for the last eighteen years and are now ready to come down that road the Tartan Army sing about.

The one that leads to a major stage instead of an exit door.

The win over Malta was an exercise in doing what we should have done, taking care of business against a side unworthy of being a booby trap to our ambition to get to the finals in Russia two years from now.

What Strachan and his players have to do now is win on an evening when we're not expected to be triumphant and alter the complexion of our qualification campaign as a consequence.

Remember it was the failure to get anything from two games against Germany, while others were more successful, which cost Scotland a place at Euro 2016.

A win over England at Wembley or Slovakia away would be the kind of bonus we could get excited over, so let's accept a job well done in Malta and kick on from there. But let's not take anything for granted just yet where the bigger picture of qualification is concerned.

Speaking of which, how much has been taken for granted where this week's main event has been concerned? Have you met a Celtic supporter who doesn't think his, or her, team will beat Rangers comfortably when the sides come together at noon on Saturday?

Me neither.

But, on the subject of jumping to conclusions, my mind goes back to Martin O'Neill's last ever league match in charge of Celtic. It was the potential championship decider against Motherwell at Fir Park, staged at the same time as Rangers were playing Hibs at Easter Road.

You get used to personal abuse in this job and on that afternoon my road into Fir Park was blocked by a Celtic fan who asked me if I still believed Rangers would win the title, a prediction I had had the temerity to make on Superscoreboard earlier in the season.

It's never good to reply on these occasions as any answer given runs the risk of causing offence. So I retreated to my seat in the press box and prepared to take my medicine as Celtic went a goal up and held their lead into the closing minutes of the game.

But then fate, one of the few constants in the game, took a hand and Motherwell were delivered of two late goals as the title went to Celtic's historic rivals. The moral to the story is that you're best not to count your chickens for fear of an arithmetical glitch.

This advice, along with any other reasoned argument, will be binned between now and what will be an extraordinary weekend.

If the proverbial wee men from Mars landed in George Square on Saturday afternoon nobody would pay them a blind bit of notice.

The country will have come to a shuddering halt before then and remain in lockdown between the hours of twelve noon and 2pm. The four hours after that will be taken up by the fans having their say on Superscoreboard. Why wait three hours for the traditional 5pm. beginning to the phone-in when that would be a waste of time due to the exceptional circumstances surrounding the game at Celtic Park?

This will be, unless you're one of those who clings to the belief that Rangers are a new club, the first league meeting of the teams for four years. But the usual rules will apply.

There will be no room for rational debate and no interest in seeing both sides of any story. Reason will go out of the window and tolerance will be a foreign concept to the callers. That's the way it is and there's no point in denying it, any more than it's possible to say that a sixty thousand crowd paying a minimum of fifty pounds a head is a lot of money to watch two teams who've allegedly never met before in a league game.

Brendan Rodgers and Mark Warburton will give each other a level of mutual respect built on a long-standing working relationship with each other, but that's where civility will begin and end on Saturday.

So we might as well cut to the chase and let the fans of both sides have their say on the referee having decided the match one way or the other and the agendas that were complicit in the final outcome.

As Groucho Marx once famously wrote, "Everybody knows there ain't no sanity clause."

I'm going to jump to a conclusion here and say it'll be unmissable radio. Can't wait!