WHEN
the
European Nations League was first suggested, I had a notion it would
be good for Scotland. This was based on the little-known or
appreciated fact, at least in Scotland, we always do better in
competitive games.
One
of the best of the many pro-independence websites is one entitled:
“Talking Up Scotland,” it is run by Professor John Robertson, a
former senior teacher at the University of the West of Scotland. The
good professor has been waging, ever since he was “retired early”
- apparently for not singing of the British Establishment hymn book –
a one-man campaign to counter-act the many lies, items of
misinformation and downright shite published by our rabid right-wing
mainstream media.
Professor John Robertson - we coud do with someone in Scottish Football doing his job
Maybe,
given the way the Lap Top Loyal, the Celtic-Minded and the
Hingers-Oan of our football media have been anti every Scotland
manager since Craig Brown, we need a Prof. Robertson type, to cut
through the bullshit and tell it like it is.
The
caveat is, as always – there are three ways of doing anything in
sport: the easy way, the hard way and the Scottish way. We are the
absolute masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. No
victory is ever greater than a Scottish one, and no defeat is ever as
ignoble as a Scottish loss.
But,
given the lack of cash in our game, the lack of administrative
talent, the lack of foresight and forward planning our game, you
know, we are not in as bad a place as we perhaps believe ourselves to
be.
Of
course we have this long, long history weighing us down. After all,
while you can credit England with codifying and organising the game,
it was the Scots who adapted the basic English method and made it
work – we invented the passing game, every early advance had a Scot
or two. Then we allowed the SFA blazers to have too-big a say, we
allowed a couple of clubs founded on sectarianism and bigotry to
become too-powerful, and we stagnated.
Today,
we see ourselves as too wee, too poor and too stupid to get back to
where we think we ought to be, well, I concede, there isn't a lot of
cash slopping around in the Scottish game, but, if we make the best
of what we have got – we can surely live with the wealthy and have
as good a quality of football.
We
have been playing international football for almost 150 years, we are
in our 15th
decade as an international-playing country. Here is our record over
these 15 decades:
1870s
– played 12 – won 8 – 66.7% wins
1880s
– played 26 – won 22 – 84.6% wins
1890s
– played 30 – won 19 – 63.3% wins
1900s
– played 30 – won 15 – 50.0% wins
1910s
– played 15 – won 7 – 46.7% wins
1920s
– played 33 – won 23 – 69.7% wins
1930s
– played 42 – won 22 – 52.4% wins
1940s
– played 17 – won 7 – 41.2% wins
1950s
– played 67 – won 32 – 47.8% wins
1960s
– played 63 – won 29 – 46.0% wins
1970s
– played 88 – won 37 – 42.1% wins
1980s
– played 88 – won 35 – 39.8% wins
1990s
– played 89 – won 37 – 41.6% wins
2000s
– played 85 – won 33 – 38.8% wins
2010s
– played 80 – won 34 – 42.5% wins
These
figures give us an overall record since 1872 of having played 766
games, of which we have won 362, or 47.3%. Of these games, 226 have
been friendlies, while the other 540 have been competitive – in the
sense there were league points or a trophy at stake. If we separate
the two types of games we find:
Friendlies
– played 226 – won 100 – 44.6% wins
Competitive
– played 540 – won 262 – 48.5% wins.
We
tend to disparage today's players, as being not as good as the ones
we once had. We long for a new Dalglish or Law, we wonder if we will
ever see another Johnstone, or Baxter, Souness or McGrain. Just have
a look at these figures above, our present bunch of no-hopers are
actually doing better than our star-studded sides of blessed memory.
The
current crop of players and managers are actually doing better than
the giants of the past. For instance, our Teams of the Decades for
those “great years” of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, when Scotland
were near ever-presents at the World Cup finals are:
Team
of the 1970s: Rough; Jardine, McGrain; Bremner, McQueen, Buchan;
Dalglish, Gemmill, Jordan, Hartford, Morgan.
Team
of the 1980s: Leighton; Gough, Malpas, Souness, McLeish, Miller;
Dalglish, McStay, Archibald, M Johnston, Strachan.
Team
of the 1990s: Leighton; McKimmie, Boyd, McCall, Hendry, Calderwood;
Gallacher, McStay, McCoist, McAllister, Collins.
Even with these two in the side, we didn't do as-well as the current squad
There
are some sterling names in there, but, their under-rated modern-day
successors are actually a marginally more-successful outfit. We may
not be featuring on the big stage, as we were back then, but, we are
winning more games.
Of
course, it is always difficult to compare eras, perhaps it is a case
of while we have made marginal gains, other countries have simply got
better, had better coaching and player development strategies in
place, made better use of the available talent.
Maybe
we should try to be a wee bit less Scottish. The wind is not always
in our faces; perhaps good things are for the likes of us. He might
not, for now, be getting credit fot it, but, I would like to hope, by
delivering those last two results, perhaps Big Eck has started us of
on the upward staircase again.
We
might never get back to where we were in the 19th
century, but, perhaps, in the remainder of the 21st,
we can get closer to where we want to be – and, the last two wins
were a good place to start from.
