Shankly Wasn't Ready

ONE common thread in Scotland teams, back in the days of the SFA having a selection committee of butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers who knew better than the professionals, the players and managers, how to pick a Scotland team, was the inclusion in the team of what would today be known as a wild-card pick. This was a previously unfancied player, plucked from obscurity in England, and capped, to mass utterings of: "Shuggie who?" from the Tartyan Army, when the team was announced.

Some of these guys - John Hewie of Charlton being perhaps the best example - went on to do great things in dark blue; others such as Fulham's Ian Black for the 1948 Hampden clash with England, or West Ham's John Dick, at Wembley in 1959, were never heard of again, but left in peace to have good club careers in England.

The fourth game in our run-down of Wembley wins has a couple of good examples of thisphenomenon. That game is:

England 0 Scotland 1: 1938

THIS match is perhaps the most-overlooked of our nine Wembley wins. Hardly surprising really, with the world on the brink of war, football was of little importance in 1938. but, this win, I feel, ought to rank highly in our list of victories over the Auld Enemy.

For a start, Scotland, while not picking what the home-based Terracing Tams would have seen as our top team - no Jerry Dawson, Jimmy Delaney or Bob McPhail for instance: indeed, no representatives from the league-winning Celtic of that Scottish season.

However, the selectors did make one inspired choice - they built the team around the Preston North End team which would win the FA Cup that season. That Preston side had a steel core of Scottishness running through it, with four Deepdale men in the side at Wembley - left back and future Scotland manager Andy Beattie, centre-half Tommie Smith, inside left and FA Cup-winning goal-scorer George Mutch, oh, and an unheralded 25-year-old right half from Glenbuck in Ayrshire, chap by the name of Wullie Shankly, who, like Mutch, was winning his first cap.

Centre-forward Frank O'Donnell had left Preston only in November, so, there were effectively five Deepdale men in the team. Skipper George Brown was the only Rangers man in the team, with Hearts providing two in right back Andy Anderson and the great Tommy Walker, arguably the top Scottish player of that decade.

The wild card picks were both from Middlesbrough; goalkeeper Dave Cumming getting the nod ahead of Dawson, with  club mate John Milne also being handed a Wembley debut on the wing, with Brentford's Bob Reid completing the team.

England's team, with Stanley Matthews of Stoke City and ARsenal's Cliff Bastin on the flanks, Stand Cullis of Wolves at centre-half and captained by Eddie Hapgood of Arsenal, was widely expected to win with ease.

However, the divine Walker knocked home O'Donnell's knock-down in six minutes; England couldn't recover from this early blow. Scotland should have had a stonewall penalty, but didn't get it and as the home side upped the pressure ina second half salvage job, the Scots defence stood firm - Cumming became the first Scotland keeper to keep a clean sheet at Wembley - but still never got a second cap,and, albeit it narrowly, Scotland posted their first Wembley win since the "Wizards" a decade before.

Young Shankly, was damned by faint praise - the legendary sports writer Rex Kingsley, for instance, said: "Shankly all through was industrious. He gave all he had. But, I don't think he has just enough to make a national player yet". Aye, even the best can get it wrong sometimes.

Nineteen thirty-eight was a good year for Scotland, we won every international we played that calendar year, but, this often-overlooked Wembley win was, perhaps, the best of the lot.