Boston was a lovely holiday romance, but let’s leave it there. Talk of taking Tartan Army back there every two years is just cringeworthy

Boston was the loveliest little holiday romance. An unforgettable moment in time. But let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

Can’t we just allow those involved in the shenanigans around the World Cup last summer to reflect misty-eyed on doorways to Xanadu being opened by the tilt of the kilt and maybe even the heady nights they can’t remember much about at all?

Or does everything have to be milked to the max these days? Flogged like a dead horse to benefit someone or other. Ruined, really. Played out until every scintilla of fun has been drained out of it.

A bit like Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie. That started out as a bona-fide hoot. A half-cut Andy Considine dressing up in drag with his friends and family during his stag do in London in 2015 and making a music video around Baccara’s 1977 hit. It went viral. Obviously. It was – and is – hilarious.

When Scotland’s players resurrected it in the dressing room in Serbia five years later – with Considine as part of the squad – after the national team had ended a 23-year wait to make it to a major competition, it was simply inspired.

Every second of those infectious scenes exuded elation, joy, togetherness and pin-sharp humour, a killer recipe for the interludes that make life and living so great.

Now? Even the opening bars of the song bring on a sense of dread. It was splattered over T-shirts, played everywhere on repeat and still gets aired at every Scotland home game.

It’s boring now. It’s been done to death and now lives firmly in that grim, stagnant swamp known as Scottish mainstream culture along with munchy boxes, Bitz N Pieces, theatre shows about the Old Firm and ex-footballers suddenly developing a personality and getting involved in stage shows.

Everything ends up spoiled here and it looks like we’re already well down that road with the Tartan Army thanks to the news breaking that the Scottish FA are in talks with the State of Massachusetts over a biennial friendly match at the Gillette Stadium, the black hole amid the festivity at the finals thanks to struggling past Haiti and embarrassing ourselves against Morocco.

State senator Paul Feeney has been across the pond to press the flesh. Massachusetts senate president Karen Spilka is already talking about staging Tartan Day – presumably some rip-off of that twee, shortbread-tin abomination in New York – and ‘other events’.

The heart sinks. Listen, the minute politicians get involved in any kind of ‘happening’, the best thing to do is give it a wide berth.

Mind you, before the Big Swerve, it might be worthwhile having someone remind these characters from The Bay State that Massachusetts’ first contribution to Scotland supporters hitting town in summer involved hiking the cost of the 25-mile train ride from Boston to the ground from $20 to a ludicrous $80.

What unfolded there in mid-June was nothing to do with them. It was everything to do with spontaneity. As it ought to be. A glorious coming-together of all sorts of folk up for a right, royal carry-on.

There were so many glorious vignettes. Scotland punters taking over Red Sox games. Bars running out of beer. Mass marches. Local women, doped-up on Outlander, telling TikTok how a bunch of jakeys intent on drinking anything within arm’s reach – except Bud Light, of course – were making them feel ‘seen’.

It was brilliant. A short spell in which stars aligned and magic happened. Boston had everything the Tartan Army required. And going by the testimony of Bostonians, the Tartan Army brought badly needed vitality back to the streets of a city quietened by Covid and other factors.

Everybody won. Everyone there still dines out on the memory. But that’s where it should stay. In the memory. These conversations about trying to recapture that spirit, recreate it every two years around some meaningless friendly against opposition unconfirmed and possible business meetings on the periphery, feel quite sad. How can it have any legs long-term?

Joe and Josephine Punter have moved on. They’re on the batter in other places now. Next week, it’s Switzerland for a Nations League game. After that, it’s wherever the draw for the Euro qualifiers throws them. New cities. New adventures. As football away days ought to be. In, out, shake it all about.

Away days are not about teaming up with suit-wearing dignitaries to be paraded at the town hall, like performing seals in plaid – even though there does appear to be an element of the Scotland support that enjoys that kind of thing.

Away days are not about being used as political capital or forming part of some constructed ‘festival’.

Look, in most aspects of life, it’s generally best not to go back. Sticking traffic cones on top of statues all over town won’t be as funny next time. There won’t be a 20,000-strong travelling support spending their life savings on games an entire generation had been waiting for. There won’t be anything like the same buzz, if any.

Some folk might fancy returning once, just to see if it feels the same. The idea that this is going to be a big deal every two years, though, feels deeply misguided.

Boston’s Irish. Not Scottish. That Tartan Week nonsense in New York is a toe-curlingly awful melange of kilts, Scottie dogs and actors living in America telling everyone back home how to vote.

No self-respecting Scot should give it house room. If there is a plan for the same thing in Boston, the same rules apply.

Like NYC, it’ll suit those from the political class in the mood for a junket, of course. John Swinney will already be counting the air miles if there’s another game in Massachusetts to go to.

The public, of course, is still counting the cost of the First Minister’s last trip there for the World Cup. The bill came in at £45,000 for him and two senior aides to fly business class. The entire trip for government staff came to more than £98,000.

Swinney plays the role with aplomb at these affairs, supping a pint in his Scotland top. The Scottish Football Association need to ask themselves this, though: why should they put themselves at the heart of some kind of cock-eyed project to build bridges politically?

First up, the players are hardly likely to welcome a pointless week in America being added to a jam-packed schedule. More importantly, though, what exactly has this SNP-led administration, outwith giving a few bob to grassroots, done for Scottish football down the years?

From this vantage point, they’ve been no friend to the national game or its followers. The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, repealed in 2018, was a scandalous piece of legislation that criminalised fans and made going to football unpleasant.

Clubs have had to fight tooth and nail to secure trials to sell pints inside stadiums when other sports are allowed to do what they like. After trouble in Glasgow city centre ahead of the Old Firm League Cup final two years ago, Swinney stated that ‘the clubs have got a responsibility to make sure their fans behave properly’.

Inside their grounds, yes. What are they meant to do, though, about teenagers running amok on Argyle Street?

Looking after that is the job of the police. Of course, anyone reading 1919 magazine, funded by the Scottish Police Federation, earlier this year will have noted an article about policing around football being ‘chaotic’ and understaffed because of SNP Government budget cuts.

Just like everything else in this sorry little nation built on buying votes for ‘free stuff’, Police Scotland is creaking at the seams. Why would anyone want to get involved in another transatlantic piece of theatre selling some false, outdated, vaguely comical vision of it to foreigners?

A pointless Scotland friendly – served up as part of some forced, hackneyed ‘cultural exchange’ or not – is hardly an idea to be getting on board with.

Pure dead brilliant, it won’t be. More like pure cringe.