FOR any lad born into a working class environment in Scotland the gift of being able to play football well can be both a blessing and a curse. He will glide through his school years like a young prince as it gradually begins to dawn on those around him that God has handed him life’s golden ticket.

His family will bask in the reflected glory of his skills and begin to fantasise that one of their very own might, in a few years’ time, be playing for Celtic or Rangers. He could well become their passport to a better life in a more affluent neighbourhood. All of their hopes and aspirations are invested in him and he soon becomes aware of the burden that is his to bear.

At school, his teachers will indulge him too. Any academic expectations they may have had of him will be quietly laid aside. For, in Scotland, being excellent at football will almost always outweigh the need to gain solid academic qualifications.

His male peer group will fawn over him and grant him a gilded passage through his teenage years in the hope that he will still value their friendship after the local paper carries a picture of him signing a contract with a smiling and benevolent Brendan Rodgers. Entry to every party is his for the asking and girls will dream of one day bringing him home to meet her parents.

There are a handful of anointed young men in Scotland who will reach the age of 30 believing that they can do no wrong and that life consists of a succession of people saying “yes” to you and agreeing to indulge even your most idle whims. For several others who embarked on the same journey reality will have arrived in a contract with Dumbarton or a year-long loan deal with St Mirren.

They will be considered lucky too. For the overwhelming majority of those who were anointed as schoolboys, disappointment will have arrived with an arm around the shoulder and a shake of the head.

These are Scotland’s lost boys, destined to spend the rest of their lives pondering on what might have been and wondering how to gain a belated qualification or two; perhaps even an apprenticeship or a vocational qualification. They will find that those who once scattered palms at their feet are now a few years ahead of them in this life rendered more ordinary.

Some, too, as we have been learning these past few weeks, will also be trying to process much darker memories from the sport that spat them out. For, at the point when a gifted young schoolboy footballer feels he is most highly favoured, he is also one of the most vulnerable children in the land.

The saddest and most wretched news photograph of this year in the UK was carried in most of the national newspapers last week. In it a group of middle-aged men looked into the lens, defeat and bewilderment etched on faces still handsome and keen but a quiet and defiant dignity too.

These men, former professionals in football’s pre-Babylonian era, had been sexually abused as teenagers when they were chasing their dreams and those of their family and friends too.

As young men, barely out of school, they had been singled out to compete for glory and riches beyond their most vivid imaginations. In each of their cases the key to unlocking this golden future lay almost exclusively in the hands of an adult coach entrusted with the sacred task of cultivating their talents.

They would have done anything to please him; to ensure that they were in his favour and that he might, just might, recommend them for an outing in the reserves the following Thursday night at Swindon Town or Stenhousemuir.

As each day brings another batch of former players who have contacted special sex abuse helplines, a deeply disturbing narrative is beginning to unfold: that professional football clubs north and south of the Border were targeted by a mendicant troupe of paedophiles who realised gleefully that some coaching badges and a dash of charisma would allow them to gain unfettered and unquestioning access to their prey.

In an investigative report into historic sex abuse at Celtic Boys Club written 20 years ago by two former colleagues of mine, Audrey Gillan and Ron McKay, one paragraph distressed me more than any other.

This suggested that the sex abuser targeted mainly players of lesser ability in the secure knowledge that they would be more eager to gain his favour. Recent revelations indicate that many professional clubs north and south of the Border were targeted by abusers to gain access to young victims.

In the two weeks since the first revelations of sex abuse at British professional football clubs emerged, more than 500 calls have been made to the special helpline.

More than 20 UK police forces, including Police Scotland, are investigating these claims. It is safe to assume that, for every former footballer who has willed himself to come forward, there are many others who prefer to suffer in silence, fearful perhaps of exhuming a pain long stored internally.

These men are the victims but there are other lesser casualties, most of them the blameless youth coaches who weekly volunteer their time to provide boys and girls with the sheer joy of belonging to a football team with its own kit and playing in a proper league.

As the police make their enquiries the football authorities and the senior clubs will probably get together with media consultants and fashion some well-rehearsed abjurations and pledges. Many will do so in the full and certain knowledge that they failed lamentably in their basic duties of care to hopeful boys and youths over many generations.

These clubs are revered by the families who entrusted them with that which was most dear to them. They have betrayed them and it isn’t enough to say sorry and that it won’t happen again.

Instead of spending desperate millions on another over-hyped continental playmaker of unproven ability, they must be made to ensure that every child who is placed into their care is treated like a son or daughter.

Our professional football clubs enjoy a privileged status in a land where this sport is still venerated, especially in those communities where it can bring much-needed hope and joy, no matter how fleeting.

For far too long they have been able to exploit the reverence and goodwill of loyal families by giving them the glimpse of a jewelled future. In return they throw the majority of these children onto a scrapheap, caring little for the pain and psychological damage that rejection can cause.

Many of the bigger clubs insist that they dispense their responsibilities to their young charges in a much more enlightened manner with training schemes and vocational day courses.

As the list of broken ex-professionals grows and the extent of the attempts of clubs to cover up and to look the other way, why should we believe anything they say?