No self respecting football team starts a season these days without having a tour.
That's why I find myself on a Tuesday afternoon in a hotel room in St Andrews. I feel well out of place.
It's got nothing to do with an irrational paranoia about being an Englishman north of the border.
Neither is it, in Prince William's favourite university town, an inferiority complex about my lack of royal blood.
No, my discomfort can be summed up in one word: Golf.
This whole town is built around the Royal and Ancient. I must be the only person ever to stay in this hotel, which believe it or not is even on a street called Golf Place, not to posses even a half-set of clubs never mind plus-fours, a sun-visor or my own caddy.
It's the only golf course I have ever seen which doesn't involve having to putt a ball through a little windmill. I had better not say that out loud while I'm here.
A cynic might suggest that the proximity of such a golfing mecca might be one of the reasons a football squad would choose this wee town (as the locals probably wouldn't say) as their base for a pre-season training camp.
A quick walk around the town on my arrival revealed another potential motive for Norwich City's manager to come here.
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The windmill point is a good one, could St Andrews learn something from "the Great Yarmouth Open"? I guess it counts as a links course!
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