THERE are few more routine football fixtures for the major countries than San Marino and again on Friday they were hit for eight by an England side barely out of second gear.

Without wanting to sound harsh on the minnows from the Italian Peninsula, it felt like I was watching a second consecutive Friday night of Comic Relief such was the standard of defending.

It was so one-way that English stopper Joe Hart could have done with the sofa that Bolton funnyman Peter Kay sat on for his Red Nose Day fundraiser.

Joking aside, however, is it really what we want to see?

It is always nice to see England triumph but this was like watching a charity match.

And I question how it must feel for the plumbers and electricians of San Marino to walk away from virtually every match on the wrong end of a hiding.

As a traditionalist, I shudder at the thought of yet more seeding in football. It may suit UEFA and FIFA to have more glamour games between top clubs and nations, but there should still be room for every team, no matter how small, to compete on a level playing field.

What I do believe, though, is that a pre-qualifying stage could be tested at international level as it is in the Champions League.

Let’s put San Marino in with Liechtenstein – their only international victims – the Faroe Islands, Gibraltar and Andorra.

Surely that would be better for those nations to have a really competitive round of group games with the incentive of being in the mix with the big guns in the next phase.

While I doubt the football chiefs in microstates like San Marino would pass up their current lot of facing at least one big nation each time qualifying comes around, it cannot be doing any good to confidence or their own domestic league.

We are talking about a nation of just 32,000 people that can still boast 15 teams in the San Marino Championship.

But if you think Scottish football suffers because of the big leap from domestic to European competition, then you can only imagine what the chasm is for the part-timers there.

It is not about snobbery or being condescending to the smaller nations, it is about common sense.

The competition would enhance their game and we would be spared the training ground strolls like Friday.