IT began in the Armenian capital of Yerevan and it will end at Hampden a week on Saturday.

Arithmetic isn’t my strong point, then again I don’t have a strong point, but my reckoning is that by the end I’ll have watched 77 live games this season. As my dear old mum would say: “It’s not really a proper job, dear.”

This season has brought me perhaps 100 knock-backs from people I wanted to speak to, an estimated 35,682 hours of hanging about waiting to speak to people who didn’t want to speak to speak to me but were forced to, trips to Dublin, Burnley, Lithuania, Leipzig, Dubai, Manchester and most memorably Livingston where I got lost for two hours and slowly went mad.

The Cowdenbeath-Rangers Scottish Cup tie was the coldest I have ever been at a match. By the end, a few laptops, including mine, had frozen, which I didn’t even know could happen.

A few weeks later and at Tynecastle, Hearts played Partick Thistle in a replay, the rain was so bad that I had to close the laptop to save it from drowning.

Celtic beating Leipzig was a great night. The day Rangers defeated St Mirren in Paisley when Daniel Candeias was sent off for blowing a kiss was peak Scottish football – especially when the press pack stood watching the footage with a bemused Steven Gerrard, who has been good to deal with, after the game.

Aberdeen going down narrowly to Burnley was a superb game which I didn’t want to end. Kilmarnock were always good to watch. James Forrest’s four goals in half an hour at Perth the best individual performance I saw.

Motherwell taking apart Aberdeen 3-0 at Fir Park was an enjoyable surprise if you aren’t a Don.

Alfredo Morelos was never anything short of entertaining. And brilliant. Motherwell’s David Turnbull and Lewis Ferguson at Aberdeen gave us hope for the future.

Craig Levein annoyed everyone, the Greenock Telegraph took out a Fatwa on Ray McKinnon (not really), a jobby on the pitch held up a game at Spartans, Rangers got four penalties in game when only three of them were dodgy, Matt Ritchie turned his back on Scotland; forcing us all to remember that he once played for us.

Ach, it’s been a laugh. If we ignore that game in Kazakhstan and his it ended for Alex McLeish. That wasn’t funny at all.

More amusing was the fall-out of the Brendan Rodgers’s act of betrayal. I enjoyed Rodgers’s press conferences. He was interesting if sometimes a bit lax with his storytelling.

More than once, after he told us about ‘that time he’d…’ and you would go back to the office only to find out it was, in fact, completely false.

However, he was good copy and good fun. Many of us in this game felt his third season would be his last but we were all surprised at the timing of it all.

The reaction of (mostly) men to a football manager taking a better paid job in a better league was a reminder that when it comes to the beautiful game, even supposed adults can lose the plot.

The banners and comments were embarrassing. An issue of a Celtic fanzine was particularly amusing, just a lot of blokes crying about being dumped by a girl after the fourth year end of term party.

In saying all of that, Rodgers’s pitiful ‘I’m still pure a Celtic fan’ claims since then are akin to a man in a large hole in the ground swapping a shovel for a mechanical digger.

And before I move on, I have to mention Rangers (before there are letter) and their belief that the world is against them. Again, it’s funny in a way watching a small child fall over can be quite funny. It should be pitied more than laughed at.

My player of the year, the honour all pros crave, goes to Alan Power of Kilmarnock. He wasn’t the best, for me that was Callum McGregor, but at 31 the Irishman has transformed himself into a superb central midfielder.

He plays with the ball at his foot and his head in the air. The hard work almost goes without saying but this guy runs more than anyone else at both ends off the pitch. I saw a lot of Killie. I never saw Power have a bad game.

Man of the year is, of course, Steve Clarke. A brilliant manager who took Kilmarnock into third and Europe, and now is going to win Scotland the European Champions and then the World Cup.

He also got us all talking about sectarianism in an almost mature way.

Tip of the hats to Dick Campbell who managed to get a nine-match touchline ban for calling someone a C word. Although as he told me: “In Fife, that’s a compliment.”

Chris Sutton does an excellent impression of Chris Sutton, the classic wind-up merchant, Derek McInnes chipped in with some crackers and John Robertson’s rant against referee Kevin Clancy and especially fourth official Davie Lowe after Inverness lost to Dundee United in the play-off was so good that I almost gave the wee man a standing ovation.

A special mention goes to Bobby Linn of Arbroath. He’s a great guy, good player, who won PFA Scotland League One Player of the Year He wasn’t at his best at the dinner having only got in from a night out at 10.30am that morning. Still, he gave us a funny interview.

As always, it’s been a laugh. Sometimes silly, occasionally ugly, but that’s Scottish football for you. The most important thing is what have I learned from it all.

A few lessons have been taken it, however, the one which sticks out is that you should go to Yerevan. It’s a beautiful city and six strawberry daiquiris can be purchased for a tenner. You are welcome.

And Another Thing

THEY look the same, sound the same and have the exact same easy-going manners and nice way about them. Stephen, Paul and 'wee John' McGinn are a credit to their family. All three are smashing players but also polite, funny, decent folk and clearly not changed much from being those three brothers in Clydebank who kicked a ball about the street.

Stephen and Paul helped keep St Mirren in the Premiership on Sunday and then 24 hours later, the wean scored and was his usual brilliant self for Aston Villa as the beat Derby and return to the Premier League. Stephen's has a stag-do coming up. It could be a good one. All three deserve their half pint of shandy.