IT seems almost incongruous to be writing about the glorious triviality that is sport on a day of such momentous import for our country of Scotland.

As I write, the EU vote to accept “the deal” has just been approved. It means that, against Scotland’s will, Brexit is now going to happen because not enough MPs are going to vote against Theresa May’s illusory “deal” and risk a General Election in which they would have to tell people their own choices over Brexit. Oh, and they would also be risking the fracturing of their oh-so-bloody-precious Union.

It is incumbent upon our First Minister to set the day for our independence referendum, sooner rather than later. But for Scotland to prosper we need SID.

Did I say SID? SID? This is one of the lessons that sport can teach a future Scotland.

Yes, SID means “strength in depth” and we Scots have it as a people and can prosper. So how does sport teach us that SID is viital?

I was speaking to a Hearts fan after Saturday’s dismal efforts by his team and I was struck by how succinctly he summed up the problems that the club is now facing after its superb start to the season.

“We thought that we had strength in depth, but it turns out that we haven’t,” said the dyed-in-the wool Jambo who would normally never utter or hear a word of criticism against his team.

He rightly pointed out that no club could afford to lose the likes of Steven Naismith, Christophe Berra, John Souttar and Uche Ikpeazu, the four most influential players during Hearts’ good run.

As manager Craig Levein himself said the other day, missing such a quartet means that other teams do not fear Hearts now, whereas earlier in the season no other club in the Premiership fancied a trip to Tynecastle or a visit from the men in maroon.

Strength in depth has always seemed to be something that Scottish sport in general has lacked. It is not a mythical thing, not a chimera, it is a genuine quality that all the best sides have, yet it is only recently in Scottish rugby, for example, that Vern Cotter and Gregor Townsend preached the absolute necessity for strength in depth and went about getting it for the national side.

Great coaches like Jim Telfer and Ian McGeechan knew it back then, but they also knew that Scottish rugby did not have SID, even when we were winning Grand Slams – the 1990 Slammers featured just 16 players in all, it should be remembered. Nowadays no major professional rugby team, never mind a national squad, feels complete without loads of genuine replacements in every position.

Sports coaches to a man and woman know they need adequate player resources because the first XI or XV will always suffer injuries or loss of form. That’s were SID comes in, and it usually means money.

Let me put it the Hearts way – if your football team or rugby club or national side lost four fine performers to long-term injury, could they cope?

Of the current Premiership teams, only Celtic have genuine strength in depth as they proved in recent weeks by coping without their inspirational captain Scott Brown, future captain Kieran Tierney and top goalscorer Leigh Griffiths – and wasn’t his arrival as a substitute and that terrific free-kick goal against Hamilton proof of his value to the champions?

It’s SID that means Celtic will go on to win the league title this season and why they will take the first step to a treble treble against Aberdeen on Sunday.

Rangers could give Celtic a serious challenge this season, but I suspect they do not have quite the strength in depth that Celtic have, certainly not up front. The club’s director of football Mark Allen more or less admitted at the weekend that Rangers needed more firepower when he said they would be looking for a striker in the January transfer window.

Yes, Rangers have made 15 signings since Steven Gerrard arrived, and yes they have a squad of 25 at the moment, but take out Alfredo Morelos – he’s doing a good job of that himself, as he was booked again on Saturday to earn a one-match suspension – and Kyle Lafferty and they have no strikers of any quality, with loan signing Umar Sadiq not up to scratch and heading back to Italy.

The club’s AGM tomorrow will be very instructive. Will Gerrard be given the money to augment his squad in January? The £14 million losses announced recently beg the question about whether the Dave King coterie can continue to fund the Ibrox changes, and if not, how will Gerrard create the SID he knows he needs?

Alex McLeish found out last week that he really does have SID in the Scottish national football squad, but even after those tough wins over Albania and Israel, could he be confident about the future when injuries can wreak havoc on his squad selection?

The same question applies to Gregor Townsend and our national rugby squad. Do we have sufficient SID to make the sort of progress that Scotland requires to make an impact in the World Cup next year?

I suggest not, at least at the moment.

Does Scotland have the SID to be an independent nation? Yes we do. In sport maybe not quite, but in real life we absolutely do and always will. Bring it on, and the sooner the better.