In the game against St Johnstone United’s starting eleven was made up of a Ukrainian, two Australians, a Dutchman, a Moldovan, a Macedonian, a Bissau-Guinean, a Finn, a Ghanaian, a Swede and a Hungarian. There wasn’t a player with a British passport, let alone a Young Scot card. 

Manager Jim Goodwin has high hopes for 19-year-old centre-half Sam Cleall-Harding. The Scotland under-21 player spent much of last season on loan at Kelty Hearts where Scott Allan was one of his team-mates.  

Chatting to the former Hibs and Celtic midfielder on Thursday he tipped the young defender to win a Scotland cap inside two or three years and Goodwin has also challenged the teenager to lose his ‘young guy’ tag and force his way into the team after a handful of appearances last season. That’s easier said than done when his employers are shipping in a multi-national task force of affordable talent from abroad. 

United are far from an isolated example. Of the 87 transfer acquisitions made by teams in the SPFL Premiership so far this window, just 22 – or 25% – are eligible to play for Scotland’s under-21 or senior national teams. 

As recently as season 2021/22 45% of the players who started games in the top flight were Scots born. Last season that figure dropped to 31.46%. 

The situation is grimmer still for players in the key transition ages between 16 and 21. Last season just  3.23% of those who started games in the top league were under the age of 21. Aberdeen and [[Celtic]] failed to start a single Scot in that age group. 

Ask club officials why they’re signing so many players from overseas and one explanation rears its head repeatedly. Brexit has priced them out of signing footballers on their own doorstep. 

When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016 new immigration rules made it harder and more expensive for English clubs to sign players from countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Unfettered access to players from the EU disappeared overnight. 

To play in London, Manchester or Newcastle players from Europe would be required to secure a Governing Body Exemption, based on a points-based system which takes international caps, league ranking and the transfer fee into account. 

Plenty sail through unchallenged. Yet for clubs in the EPL and Championship the process is harder than it used to be. The days of stockpiling under 18 players from overseas for the rainy day which never comes are over. And one of the few markets where they can still sign who they like is Scotland. 

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Scouts from English teams always kept an eye on the best one or two players in academies. Post Brexit they’re looking at players three, four and five as well. For Scottish clubs life is now a constant battle to stop good players being lured away by predators with deep pockets. It’s a fight they can’t win. 

This week 16-year-old Callan Hamill left St [[Johnstone]] for Arsenal. Since Brexit Charlie McArthur, Rory Wilson, Daniel Kelly, Daniel Cummings, Karamoko Dembele, Rocco Vata, Ethan Laidlaw and Callum McKenna have been persuaded to exchange the chance of playing in their homeland for a hefty pay packet.  

If it was hard enough to match the financial expectations of players offered a move south before then the shrinking labour pool created by Brexit has only made things worse. As soon as English teams started wrapping themselves around Scotland’s best prospects like Japanese knotweed wages surged. Agents know they can get  six or seven grand a week for their client from the likes of Luton Town, Wycombe Wanderers, MK Dons or Salford City. Outwith [[Celtic]] and Rangers, clubs in the top six of the SPFL Premiership can’t compete with that. 

The only advantage SPFL sides retain is a Governing Body Exemptions system a good deal more lenient than it is down south. There’s no points system up here and that’s one of the reasons why they’re flooding their squads with cut-price foreign imports.  

Priced out of deals for players in their own back yard recruitment chiefs fill their squads with players from Australia, Slovakia and Burkina Faso instead. They’ve more chance of being knocked back by the local loan shark than they have of failing to land a GBE for a journeyman from Jakarta. 

So long as their team is winning supporters don’t especially care where their players are born. Remember that when a national team short of quality goalkeepers, central defenders, left-sided attackers and goalscoring attackers fails to qualify for next summer’s World Cup finals. They’ll have plenty to say on the subject then. 

Scotland players don’t just fall from the sky. The SFA can’t shake a magic tree and expect world-class footballers to tumble down like coconuts. They need to be nurtured and coached and provided with a route to a first team they can’t access because a) they grabbed the big money on offer from England and disappeared or b) they stayed put and found the pathway blocked by overseas jersey fillers. 

Last week brought confirmation of the first co-operation agreements between teams in the Scottish Premiership and lower league partners. 

Young players in the key transition age group of 16-21 will go out in search of competitive games before returning to their parent club and challenging for a place in the first team.  

While the SFA are duty bound to try something to help Scotland managers of the future, there’s a nagging suspicion which is hard to shift. 

If these kids were showing signs of serious talent in their respective age groups their next port of call wouldn’t be Elgin City or East Kilbride. 

In a post Brexit world they’d be straight in to the back of a speeding car and signing on for ten grand a week at Everton.