A Dublin Draw I can live with; that result means, we will, everything else being equal, finish above the Republic in the final table. We can now focus on Poland and Germany ahead of us.
But, like that old sweet song, I've got Georgia on my mind. Back in the day, big Alex McLeish gave Scotland new belief, during his all-too-short spell as National Team Manager. Eck finished with something like a 70% wins percentage, but, like his predecessors from Berti Vogts, and his successors, he didn't deliver an appearance in the finals of either the World Cup or the European Championship.
The reason for that failure was mainly, a defeat by Georgia in Tiblisi. Beating Ukraine in Kiev was always going to be tough, given, at that time the Ukranians were one of the top teams in the world, so, no shame in losing there. But, Georgia were beatable, even in Tiblisi and Eck and his team couldn't do this. That memory is one reason why I fear for WGS and his squad.
They will have to head East at the start of a new season when they will maybe be a bit under-cooked. Also, the Georgia game is the first leg of a double-header, with the Germans, at Hampden, as the second leg. I fear we might be getting ahead of ourselves, by thinking about the Germans and perhaps under-estimating the Georgians.
It is a classic Scottish situation - not concentrating too-much on the "diddy" team, as we forget about: "one game at a time"and look too-far ahead to the "big" game.
Hence, having Georgia on my mind.
I HAVE long held to what I call the "Willie John Dictum" - a reference to their vastly-experienced captain Willie John McBride encouraging some members of the unbeaten 1974 British Lions in South Africa to ignore the South African Broadcasting Corporation's re-run of the crucial Third Test, victory in which had won the Test series for the Lions.
"That's history, ignore it and come back to the bar", was Willie John's instruction to his troops. I commend this attitude to those Tartan Army foot soldiers looking for a liquid brunch in Dublin this morning.
OK, the Irish goal was offside, but stood. Nothing we can do about it now (well, if we don't qualify we could always try the FAI approach of threatening legal action and settling out of court). We simply have to move on and concentrate on winning our remaining games.
By the way, I refer in my opening paragraph to our record in Georgia. The Poles have come to Hampden before now and seriously spiked our hopes in big competitions. We hear a lot about the disaster that was our trip to Naples in the final game of the 1966 World Cup qualifying campaign - the even-bigger disaster in that campaign was when we lost from a winning position, against the Poles, at Hampden.
We cannot change history, but, we can learn from it and avoid repeating past mistakes something we should remember as we approach three very difficult games at the start of next season.
I SEE the MSM are softening us up for the coronation of Mark Warburton and David Weir as the Rangers Tribute Act's new management team - scheduled for early this coming week.
As David Weir has probably already told Warburton, it is one thing managing Brentford, quite another managing even the RTA. At least, in appointing the two Ws, as we are being set-up to believe they will, at least the King and his court are, to some extent, looking outside the normal box of Scottish football.
Which players they bring in will be crucial to any success. There isn't a lot of "Rangers Class" talent in the current ranks of the RTA.
Warburton and Weir, or whoever gets the gig, will be expected to win the Championship next season - they will not be given time to get it right. This is a really tough gig.
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