FOR a proud Scot it sounds suspiciously like a recurring nightmare. but Tony Green insists that he loves being locked in a room for several hours every Saturday with two members of England’s World Cup-winning team.

Green, 59, the former Albion Rovers, Blackpool and Newcastle United midfield player, sits on the Pools Panel with Gordon Banks and Roger Hunt — but the Glaswegian doesn’t mind a bit.

“I’ve been on the panel for 30 years, Roger has been there all that time as well, and we all get on well,” Green said. “In the new year, Roger and I are going on holiday together to Tenerife, and at Easter all three of us are going off to play golf in Spain or Portugal. We’re great pals.”

The football pools used to play a much bigger role in British society than it does today, now that the National Lottery has given the public a quicker and easier way to indulge their fantasies of instant wealth.

In those simpler times, when rollovers and bonus balls had yet to be invented, the workings of the Pools Panel were a closely-guarded secret. Their deliberations were surrounded with mystery and rumour, and they made a papal conclave look like a public meeting. But Green is free now to shed light on their activities.

Sadly, there is little pomp or ceremony. Green drives to the pools promoters’ offices in Liverpool from his home in Blackpool, has a spot of lunch with Hunt and Banks, then they are locked in a room to argue about that day’s postponed games, if there are any.

They are barred from making contact with the outside world, but they go into private session with armfuls of stats, facts and figures to help them to make up their minds.

Green admits that his local knowledge helps when it comes to Scottish postponements. Banks and Hunt have their say, but Green knows best when it comes to gazing into the crystal ball for the notional outcome of Arbroath v Berwick Rangers.

“We are all pretty knowledgeable, and we all have our own ideas about every fixture,” Green, who became the costliest Scottish player of all-time when he switched from Blackpool to Newcastle for £150,000 in 1971, said.

“We’re all passionate about the game, and even if we weren’t on the panel, we’d still spend our time watching games and keeping in touch with results. We’re just like every football supporter. We all have our opinions and we love to discuss them with other supporters. The only difference with us is we have to come up with a definite result at the end of it.

“It can get lively in there. If Rangers are playing Celtic, there could be three different opinions on how it would have turned out. In the end, we come to a decision. But in all the 30 years I have been on the panel, there has never been an argument and nobody has fallen out.”

Green, who won six Scotland caps in the early 1970s, said: “It is more difficult in the summer when the Aussie coupon comes out. We have less direct knowledge of the teams, but we get enough information to help us to make our forecasts.”

The first Pools Panel was formed in 1963 when an Arctic winter laid waste to the fixture list and threatened to wreck the pools — three coupons in a row were wiped out.

George Young, the former Scotland international, sat with the former England players Tom Finney, Tommy Lawton and Ted Drake, as well as Arthur Ellis, the former referee, and the chairman, Lord Brabazon, on January 26 as snowstorms swept the country with fresh vim. They each got £100 for their trouble, which proved it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

For many years the panel would only meet if 30 games had been called off, but these days Green and co meet every week and provide a result for every postponement.

“We do our best to be objective, and down the years people have been happy with what we’ve done,” Green, who teaches mathematics in a secondary school the rest of the week, said.

“Occasionally, an unlucky punter might write to complain that one of our results has cost them a fortune, but that’s just the way it goes.”