Big b**ls are required to leave Scottish football and carve out a career on the continent and beyond. Sadly, I just didn't have them.
As confident and cocky as I can sometimes come across, when it came to the crunch I lacked the confidence in myself to do it. New country, different food and language and style of play? I was just happy to remain under the comfort blanket. It's a regret that I couldn't do what the likes of Aaron Hickey and Liam Henderson have achieved in Italy.
Sometimes it takes a few trailblazers to show others the way but traffic from our top league to foreign European clubs is the latest trend and almost non-existent when I played. Maybe it's our mentality to be a bit parochial. Winning a move to England was everything and I did that, unfortunately I did it back to front by starting down south at Chelsea and coming home to spend most of my career north of the border.
I watched guys like Craig Gordon, Christophe Berra and Lee Wallace do it the right way by excelling in Scotland and then going to big English clubs, I did it the wrong way around. If you didn't get to England you hadn't made it, it was the be and end all for everyone.
That's why Henderson's move to Serie B side Bari in 2018 was such a novelty at the time and he was almost forgotten about but I kept an eye on him. He's now playing in the top league with Empoli. Sliding doors are always operating in football. There were chances to go to China and Turkey and I didn't take them.
My old Hearts team-mate Ryan McGowan was over in China and his club made contact with my agent. I hummed and hawed over it and then decided it wasn't for me. It's one thing moving abroad with your family but I would have been going on my own.
It just seemed to be a long way away without the kids so I didn't go. The money was ridiculous but it just wasn't for me. That's one reason of many as to why I have such admiration for Liam and Hickey who's done incredibly well to land a megabucks move to Brentford after shining at Bologna.
Hearts will get a sell-on fee and my understanding is that it's quite a packet. That's a model for all of the young players at Tynecastle to follow. I hadn't watched much of Hickey as he landed his move to Italy shortly after making an impact in the Hearts first team.
The one game I did look at him closely was the Scotland game when he started against Ukraine last month and I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He'd been thrown in at the deep end, he looked tentative and nervous.
This is a kid who won a move to a quality Italian side, for him to get a move there, Bologna must have done their homework. To be playing in the Hearts first-team as a 16-year-old takes some doing and his career trajectory has been meteoric, who else can say they've knocked back Bayern Munich?
He's now in the English Premier League and Brentford boss Thomas Frank is meticulous about everything he does so he'll know everything about Hickey. He's clearly a special talent even if I felt nervous every time he was on the ball for Scotland, it's the same when Lyndon Dykes has it, an uneasy feeling.
Barry Douglas is another boy I know well and he's made a superb career for himself in Poland before winning moves to Wolves and Leeds United and then back to Poland. It can only be a positive if we see more and more Scottish boys going abroad to try their luck and show that there are so many other good leagues around the continent and prove there's more to life than the English Premier League.
Henderson, Hickey, Douglas and don't forget Lawrence Shankland and Jack Hendry who are in Belgium, they've all created a pathway for others to follow. Ryan Gauld's another at Vancouver Whitecaps. I wish I had the b**ls to try it, I'm older now and would love to do it but at 37-years-old I'd doubt it's going to happen.
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