DAVID WILL'S legal training helped him steer a smooth passage through 17 tempestuous years as a Fifa vice president, but ironically the one thing this particular Will couldn't secure was his own inheritance.

Just as Will - along with former Uefa president Lennart Johansson - was being made one of Fifa's first honorary life vice-presidents as he officially stepped down from his role on May 31, all hopes of a Scottish succession on the world governing body's executive committee were being killed off. John McBeth's injudicious half-hour briefing to Sunday journalists, in which he clumsily decried footballing corruption in Africa and the Caribbean, saw to that.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter said McBeth's comments had "damaged the Scottish reputation", newly appointed sports minister Stewart Maxwell called for him to stand down, and even the SFA distanced themselves from their man.

Yet Will, a 70-year-old Brechin lawyer and former SFA president, tells the Sunday Herald in an exclusive interview that he believes Scotland's reputation in the game will ultimately be untarnished by the row.

"I don't think what happened last week is going to affect the standing of Scotland," he said. "It is a nine-day wonder and in another week it will be gone. There were benefits in having a Scot on the executive committees of the two bodies the Fifa vice-president is also part of the Uefa executive but by that I do not mean I was ever in a position to get for Scotland some particular thing. But it kept the concept of Scotland being a major influence in world football and illustrated that we punched way above our weight in world terms.

"Britain still has a vice president in place, even if it is now Englishman Geoff Thompson and David Taylor is now clearly a major influence at Uefa," Will continued, reiterating his belief that the affair has not damaged Scotland's reputation. "The idea that it has is just wrong. I am not going to use the word regret' in relation to the comments. All I would say that there's no doubt that you have to be diplomatic."

WILL's opinion on McBeth's comments may differ from Blatter's, but catching up with Will this week gave an insight into how much agreement there was between the two on other matters. Or maybe it was just diplomacy in action. Will - who was elected to the 24-man Fifa executive committee back in 1990 - sided with Johansson when the Swede went head-to-head with Blatter to take over from Joao Havelange in the 1998 presidential elections. But the Scot was in remarkably conciliatory mood this week.

Will officially ended his work with Fifa and Uefa on May 31 but - aside from that honorary yet non-executive Fifa vice-presidency - he recently secured a contract to work as a consultant for Fifa on ticketing for the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. Having just been elected unopposed for another four years, Blatter's position seems stronger than ever, even if he remains under investigation by magistrate Thomas Hildbrand in Switzerland over bribery claims.

"Blatter is some guy," Will said. "Some people have nothing but bad things to say about him, but he is the most able guy you could meet. He really is. He continues to carry Fifa into a completely new era. The money is all poured back in. There is this idea that we store it all up and hide it somewhere, but it is all poured back into football. Blatter tremendously increased the development programme, tremendously increased the marketing of the World Cup, and with the proviso that money is all going back into football, Fifa - although by definition a non-profit-making association - has turned into a massive multinational company. I am very content with Blatter's re-election for the next four year term. I am very much at ease with that."

BACK in 2002, such warm sentiments were not so forthcoming. Fresh from having been awarded a CBE for his efforts in the game, Will had been put in charge of an internal audit committee investigating Fifa's finances. He discovered the governing body actually had negative equity and was bankrupt in all but name, only for a number of underhand debating tactics from Blatter and his loyalists to prevent Will taking the floor at an annual congress in Seoul to report his findings.

The same congress saw Blatter see off a presidential challenge from Issa Hayatou, and face down serious corruption allegations from his own general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen, efforts that came to an end when Zurich magistrate Urs Hubmann found insufficient evidence to launch a prosecution.

"My concern was the financial position of Fifa," Will said. "I felt I had a responsibility to the executive committee and all of the associations in the world, and my responsibility at that time was to say Fifa's equity at that time was not clever - in fact it was negative. If we had been a company, not an association, we would have had to call in the receivers. But my responsibility as head of the audit committee was to say we do have a negative equity, so take care'. That was resisted by a lot of people, and when I say resisted I mean there was a resistance to me making that public - and that was where the battle came.

"It doesn't worry me now. There were two separate points of view at that time. One was that Fifa should be totally transparent; the other was that Fifa should just say no, everything is OK. There were two separate opinions. I took one opinion, and others on the committee took another viewpoint completely on that."

Perhaps Will is so sanguine about such matters these days because the last five years have seen Fifa's finances overhauled completely, and he believes the role he played in 2002 helped turn things around. "From having a minus equity, we are now at $750 million (£375m) dollars of positive equity," he said. "That is an astounding turnaround, and it is all down to president Blatter, general secretary Urs Linsi, who is a terrific financial expert, and the finance committee of Fifa. Having been highly critical in 2002, I am now full of praise for what they have done.

"What happened in 2002 had three effects. Everything in Fifa now is transparent. Secondly, Fifa went on to a very, very tight cost control system so money wasn't thrown around any longer. Thirdly, they took the marketing of the World Cup in-house - we no longer worked with an outside agency, which led to all the problems. I don't regret being difficult in 2002 because it has produced these three positives."

Then there are Zen-Ruffinen's allegations. "What happened was that it finished in what we would call the fiscal's office," Will said. "That office did a big investigation - don't ever think it was squeezed or hidden - there was a big investigation, and the answer come to was not not guilty', but that there was no case to answer. There is no proof of anything improper having happened. Their job is to go into it pretty carefully.

"There is constant criticism, constant accusations, and if these accusations were correct then someone would have taken action by now. Where is the proof? If there was proof then someone would have taken action. If there was proof in-house then someone on the executive committee would have taken action."

THERE may be no smoking gun, yet even the most rudimentary trawl through the more momentous events to which Will has been a bit-part player suggests Fifa still has a lot of convincing to do. In late 1995, and in the run-up to the vote to decide whether Japan or Korea would host the 2002 World Cup (in the end, they both did), executive committee members were so besieged by gifts from both nations that Will and his fellow committee member, Belgium's Michel d'Hooghe, took the unusual step of declaring on a joint platform that they would not accept any further gifts. No other members of the committee showed much compulsion to follow suit.

"We were being invited to Korea and invited to Japan and I decided not to go," Will said, "because it was just too much like a bribe. We started getting gifts, and I don't mean money. I can only speak for myself - never was I offered money at any point. But we were getting gifts in funny ways. The Japanese ambassador in Britain or somebody would come and visit you and he would give you a parcel, so you couldn't really say you didn't want it. After this had happened two or three times I said no, I didn't want any. The hottest thing I ever got was a video recorder, which I gave away to a charity. I didn't want it in my house. I have no idea about other members of the committee. You would need to ask them."

The hosting of a World Cup - along with TV rights - is one of the biggest gifts in Fifa's possession, so it is little wonder further irregularities have been known to surface. In July 2000, when the executive committee met to decide the destination of the 2006 World Cup finals, the focus fell on an elderly Glasgow-born New Zealander called Charles Dempsey. When Uefa-backed Germany and popular favourites South Africa emerged as the two big contenders, Dempsey ignored the wishes of New Zealand and the rest of the Oceania confederation by failing to cast his ballot.

Consequently the vote ended 12-11 to Germany rather than the predicted 12-12 tie - saving Blatter from having to use his casting vote. Considering the Fifa president had pledged his support to both camps, that would have presented something of a problem. Remarkably, Will believes nothing "untoward happened" - other than the fact Dempsey "decided to abstain under impossible circumstances".

"Charlie was put under enormous pressure by Europe on one hand, who have been the natural historic supporters of Oceania, and by South Africa on the other, because a lot of Oceania wanted him to support them," he said.

Then there is Jack Warner, the controversial president of the Concacaf federation, who has made periodic attempts to terminate the British vice-presidency - and who predictably made the accusation of racism against McBeth. Will has a tale to tell about Warner, too. The Scot was working in ticketing in 2006 when it transpired that Simpaul travel, an agency run by Warner's son Daryan, was illegally selling tickets. Warner sold his stake in the company and avoided any action. "We can take no action against his son - because he is not a member of Fifa - other than making sure he never gets tickets again," Will said. "But there is nothing anywhere that connects Jack Warner with the tickets on the street. The son is either 40 or in his late 30s. He is a man on his own."

AS for the future, Will believes the election to the presidency of Uefa of Michael Platini - the man who back in 1998 helped bring Blatter the Fifa presidency in the first place - is a positive sign. Platini's election came with the assent of the SFA, who insisted Johansson was simply too old for another term. Aside from some tinkering with the Champions League, Will believes Platini will promote further co-operation between Fifa and Uefa.

"In the latter part of the 1990s and the early 2000s there is no doubt there was quite a divide between Fifa and Uefa, but it has been better recently, much much better," said Will.

As for his own future, Will's plans for retirement include seeing more of his wife Margaret and children Lisi and Josie - not to mention the golf course. His 17 years at Fifa have certainly given him plenty of practice at avoiding hazards.