Football is as devastated as any other community by death. Like almost everyone, I was left numb and uncomprehending at the death of Phil O’Donnell, a footballer whose values and humanity captured what has always seemed very special about Scotland’s traditional football stock. For all his modesty – indeed in part, perhaps, because of it – O’Donnell was a good man whom people enjoyed meeting and talking with.

Nonetheless, I don’t believe the Scottish game has reacted for the best by cancelling some fixtures this week.

In one sense, in the days following O’Donnell’s tragic death, what could have been good and uplifting would have been to press ahead with the matches, as much as anything as a celebration of O’Donnell’s life and all that he stood for.

Our mourning and marks of respect needn’t always be denoted by bleakness and social paralysis. At Celtic Park this afternoon, for example, in the now-cancelled Old Firm derby, the players of Celtic and Rangers could have done something special to commemorate O’Donnell’s passing, before going on to play a match that could have lifted everyone’s spirits.

In football, of all sports, commemoration can still involve affirmation and even shouts of joy for the life of someone who has been cruelly taken from us. It would have been extra special at Celtic Park today to witness the joint choirs of Rangers and Celtic supporters singing Phil O’Donnell’s name. They would have done so, and it would have been memorable.

We are all shocked by what has happened, but the claim by Celtic and then Rangers to cancel this afternoon’s match still seemed a little baffling. Four days after O’Donnell’s death, what better way to rouse everyone and uphold the name of O’Donnell and the game he so loved than by putting on a pageant in his honour in front of a full house in Glasgow?

In truth, once Celtic cited some kind of mourning, together with the claim that their players were “not in the mood” as reasons for calling off today’s game, Rangers had little option but to go along with their rivals’ view. Yet it seems an overly self-conscious and solemn approach when, in fact, the game itself would have upheld O’Donnell’s memory.

In these debates there are always family wishes to be accounted for. I’m not sure what the view is of Eileen, Phil O’Donnell’s widow, in all this, but in the past few days she has been an inspiring figure, combining private grieving with a public spirit and even a smile at the outpouring of messages of affection for her late husband in front of Fir Park.

With appropriate family consent, I think it would have been good to press ahead with our football matches, when crowds up and down the country could have raised a cheer and a song in honour of O’Donnell. Yet it wasn’t to be.

There is one exception to this: Motherwell FC itself. The club, understandably, has taken time out this week to make way for healing following the loss of their captain. No one, surely, would begrudge Motherwell their respite. In their own time and space the Lanarkshire club will come up with an appropriate gesture as a memorial for O’Donnell, and it will be wholly respected.

Personally, though, I would have loved to have been at Fir Park this Sunday, for what would have been a very meaningful occasion of Motherwell playing Celtic. For me, notwithstanding the wishes of the O’Donnell family, it would have been a fitting occasion in which to offer a song, a prayer or a minute’s silence for a fine Scottish man and footballer. I hope that possibility will come again soon.

Has Romanov seen sense at last?

Well, well, well... quite incredible! Vladimir Romanov, Hearts’ loose cannon of an owner, has finally seen fit to search for a football manager in the traditional sense, ie, someone who will actually be allowed to select his own team and decide on the tactics.

What’s this? Has the earth fallen off its axis? They’ll be telling me Mr Romanov is taking up professional dancing next.

Yesterday’s announcement from Tynecastle that the Hearts board is to start searching for a manager with a real feel for the British game will surely end months of pent-up frustration amid a Gorgie faithful who have been forced to watch their shambolic team slump. Dire has not been the word for it. The precise tragedy of Hearts in recent years – and I use the word “tragedy” purely in its football sense – is that Romanov, while having the means to make Hearts a genuine force in Scottish football, had always chosen not to execute that power appropriately.

Had I been a Hearts fan in recent times, it would have driven me to distraction thinking about what my club might have been under Romanov, but wasn’t. Hopefully, it is a state of affairs that is about to end.

Romanov has always been a likeable character. Strangely, nor has his investment in Hearts ever been one to be fully deplored, because he did rescue the club, much like Fergus McCann once did at Celtic. The frustration has been in Romanov’s almost whimsical style of tyranny.

This latest development may at least mean some well-deserved dignity being cast back in the direction of Stevie Frail, an able, likeable and articulate coach, who has been forced into the role of playing front-of-house before the media while the Romanov panto has gone on up on the stage Strangely, Frail has grown in stature and admiration every time he has stepped forth in front of us to explain decisions which weren’t his, though it is a chore he could do without. On the basis of his recent experience, this is one man I truly wish well in the Scottish game.

So much for the conspiracy theories about John Collins. If one person said it, surely another ten did as well... Collins was up to something, he wouldn’t just leave Hibernian in the way he did. Fulham, surely, was next up for him.

Well, it has transpired otherwise. Collins, having established good, early credentials by taking Hibs to a cup win in early 2007, didn’t fancy seeing those same credentials being sullied as the Hibs board sought to claw back every penny of incoming transfer fees.

Very few managers have either the private wealth or the self-belief that Collins has, and so, even with no Plan B in place, he took one look at his situation at Easter Road, with his team on the slide, and decreed: “I’m out of here.”

Collins adopts no one’s template but his own in football. It may or may not serve him well in his future career, but I admire him for it.