TO quote Shir Shean: "What you are feeling now is the Quickening" - the new Six Nations camaign is just around the corner. And you know something, I'm kinda confident Scotland can have a good one.

The big worry is - we're already being cast as favourites to beat the English and that is never an easy place for the Scots to sit. Of course, we are right to be favourites - we're at home, they've got a new coach, mostly a new team and, let's not beat about the bush - they're shite. Sounds to me like the perfect set-up for the Scots to fall flat on their communal bahookies. But, let's be confident.

Kelly Brown will be a big miss - so: why hasn't Johnnie Beattie been recalled. Form is transient, class is constant and JB Junior is class. That said, ah kent his faither and he managed to upset a few SRU Alickadoos in his days, without even trying, maybe it's hereditary and, remember, he's got some Calder genes from his celebrated mother: "Big Jill".

Still, Beattie's in the A team, so a big game against the English and who knows, he could be back - but, for me he ought never have been away.

I WAS speaking last week with a former Murrayfield back-room man, now retired and playing well in the role of Eminence Grice at a Premier One club. We were discussing, among other things, the reluctance of the SRU to let some of their fringe contracted professionals have meangingful game time in the top level of the club game here, keeping some of them back for additional training and gym time with their professional clubs, when they could well be playing real games.

I said: I felt the position had eased somewhat over this season, but, there is apparently still some reluctance on the part of Edinburgh and Glasgow to let their bench fodder play elsewhere. I can see the sense in some of the elf'nsaftey stuff which has come in, the bars of Scotland's rugby clubs are awash with limping, stick-wielding old bufties who went straight from school into open club rugby when they weren't physically ready and are now, 30-years past retirement paying the overdue bill. We need to be careful, particularly with young front row players, but, too-much cotton wool isn't good for young players.

CONGRATULATIONS to Ross Ford on his appointment as captain for the Six Nations. He fits the first part of the apparent identikit in that he's a guaranteed first choice; he ticks the experience button, he's a Lion - good luck to him. There's a lot of bullshit spoken about captaincy, what works with one man in one team, will not work with another man/team; some guys grow with captaincy, others shrink - let's hope Ross grows.

I remember one captain I played under who only got the job because he was in the clique which ran that club. Nae brains, nae sense and nae charisma. All this guy wanted to do was fight and moan. The wind was always in his face, he was never happy - I often think it was reverse psychology and we only won to make him even more miserable.

Well, one day, we were going well - everything we tried worked and it helped we were playing a bunch of no-hopers. With less than five minutes to go we were 70 points up and starting to believe we were players. Then, we conceded a sloppy try. Back came our glorious leader to address us as we awaited the conversion: "Aye, see whit happens when ye stert fuckin aboot - the rot's set-in noo", he commented. Compared to him, Captain Mainwaring was Alexander the Great.

DONNY Innes died this week. I honestly didn't know too-much about him, other than that he was one of those seemingly eternal presences which the old SRU committee system and "Buggins' Turn" seemed to breed. But, in reading his obituary, he came across as a typical member of that World War II generation we youngsters unfairly treated with disdain.

And nil point to the SRU, whose press release on his death had more mistakes than the average third XV match. Imagine the Union failing to notice he was a winning Calcutta Cup captain - we don't exactly have too-many of those around.

Donny's death allowed the re-surfacing of that hoary old SRU story about how mean they were, with Donny, allegedly turning up for his first post-war cap in 1947 to find no jersey laid out for him; on asking where it was he was told he had been given one in 1939 and ought still to have it.

This joke, of course, is more-often credited to the late Jock Wemyss, who returned from World War I minus an eye to resume an international career which had gone into cold storage in 1914, only to be told his pre-WWI jersey ought to have been brought with him.