Scottish Fitba Will Never Flourish Until We Ignore The English

MY OLD NUJ mucker John Nairn, a fine journalist and tradeunionist once famously said: "Scotland will never be free until the last minister is strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post". John, like a good few of us, had little time for the Unca Guid.

On the same track, I would say: "Scottish fitba will never flourish until we ignore the English".

This will be hard. For the first 75-years of the body's existence, the SFA and by definition the body of the kirk obsessed over the Auld Enemy across the Solway. Remember, the SFA's attitude to the embarrassing 0-7 loss to Uruguay at the 1954 World Cups was: "Ach, as long as we beat England, it'll be all right". Only, it wasn't.

To a Fife miner, or a trawlerman from Aberdeen's son, Dr Johnson's much-quoted: "To the Scotchman, there is no finer vista than the high road to England", wasn't the witterings of an English xenophobe, but, Gospel.

England has always been richer than Scotland, thus, Scots seeking to better themselves, in whatever walk of life, if lacking the ambition to go west - to North America, or south to Africa, the far east or Australasia, would turn first to England. This was as true in football as in any walk of life.

Once the English realised the passing game of the Scotch Professors of the 1870s wasn't cheating, but rather, the way to play the game - domestic Scottish football was on the slippery slope.

In the seven decades between St Andrew's Day 1872 - when international football began, and the outbreak of World War II, Scotland had the upper hand over England. Only during the 1890s, when the SFA turned their faces against the new-fangled professional football and refused to select those Scots who were being paid to play in England, did the English have the better of the annual match between the supposed best of the two nations.

The rest of the world didn't matter. The Uruguayan squad which won the Olympic Games in 1928 and the inaugural World Cup two years later would surely have given the Scots a game - but, Johny Foreigner didn't matter.

Hugo Messel's brilliant Austrian Wunderteam did indeed give an admittedly weak Scotland team a doing in the early thirties, as did the Italian team which won the 1934 and 1938 World Cups, but, these reverses didn't matter, neither opposition was England, and so long as Scotland could beat them at Hampden and get the odd result at Wembley - all was well with the world.

Then came the war, followed quickly by the British re-entry into FIFA and the World Cup. England got organised and Sir Walter Winterbottom, a man who has been, so-far, scandalously treted by football historians, began to persuade the "blazers" who still picked the side, th have a bit of consistency. Winterbottom also preached coaching and if one of his biggest and most-influential disciples was a Scot named Matt Busby, the idea of a team manager was anathema to the SFA "blazers".

Since WWII, in six decade-long periods of Anglo-Scottish football rivalry, only during the 1960s, when Scotland went unbeaten between the 1961 Wembley debacle and the only slightly-less-embarrassing 4-1 reverse of 1969, have the men in blue had the better of things.

Pre-WWII, we won nearly 50% of the matches; since WWII we have won just over 25%, and, of the last ten meetings, we have won a mere two - 20%.

On the basis of these facts, perhaps it might be a good idea to resume hostilities, or maybe not.

IF WGS can demonstrate that Scotland has a good chance of reversing the dismal run of results over the last 70 years or so; IF things can get better, then there might be just cause for resuming relations.

However, my take is: over these 70-years, we have all but abandoned the traditional "Passing Game" of those Scotch Professors and embraced England's "Long Ball" game. We side-lined our tanner-ba players, opting for English-type power players. Well, if we cannot beat the masters of that type of football - which is in any case now out-dated - why should we bother.

Also, for all their continued presence in the upper echelons of the FIFA rankings, are England all that good? Yes, they've got a better World Cup and European Championship record than us, but, they've won nothing since 1966, indeed, they have been going backwards over recent tournaments.

Sure, it would be nice to have bragging rights over our neighbours. But, what use are bragging rights when you are living in adjacent streets in a sink estate? And, that's where England and Scotland are in international football terms.

Bringing England back into play might go down well with the lunatic fringe of the Tartan Army, but, I don't think it would prepare us for facing the big guns - Spain, Italy, Germany or Brazil.

Then there is the down-side - the English media. I've read English reports of every Scottish win over the men in white. In English eyes, we never win because of our superiority, there is always the rider - roughly summed-up as: "This losing England team was quite the worse one since the last losing England team".

Praise for Scotland was always tempered by: "Of course, the Scots didn't have to play all that well - so poor was the English challenge".

I have long felt, a Scotland v England match as a single entity, has no benefit for Scottish football. A return of the Home International Championship - preferably if it was to become an Under-23 or Development tournament - would have some good, as a bridge between the Under-21 and full squads.

But, for bragging rights - no, forget it. Concentrate instead on boosting our FIFA ranking and getting up into the First Pot for tournament draws. Playing England regularly would soon became an unwelcome distraction.

However, that said - it is great to beat them.