Another Season Over - Will It Get Better Next One?

BACK IN the black and white days of the 1950s and 1960s, growing-up, we Baby Boomers were much put-upon. Until that is, a truck driver from Memphis, Tennessee went into a record shop, to cut a disc as a birthday surprise for his mother, and suddenly – the world changed. By the end of the 1960s, we his disciples, had brought sex, drink and rock 'n' roll to Scotland – and damned little thanks we have had for this.

Any way, back then, Scotland didn't have Holyrood; Nicola Sturgeon wasn't even born, and Winnie Ewing was an unknown Glasgow lawyer and the closest thing we had to a national parliament was the annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Legend has it, back in those monochrome days, a young, keen-to-impress kirk elder, at his first Assembly, asked his older, more-worldly fellow commissioner from their kirk what he was expected to do. The more-experienced commissioner pointed across the Assembly Rooms at the brooding, forbidding figure of the Very Reverend, Lord George MacLeod of Fuinary – founder of the Iona Community and said to his young companion: “whatever that man votes for, you also vote for.”

The 2019 General Assembly was held last month. I may have blinked and missed it, whereas back then, it attracted wall-to-wall media coverage. How are the mighty fallen.

I sometimes feel, as I sit in this cold, dank cave in Hole in the Wall, East Ayrshire, that the advice given to that young commissioner all those years ago is still being doled-out – to newbies attending their first “ludge meeting” of the great and good of Scottish Football, at Hampden.

I can see the newly-delegated director, representing Invertottie Howkers, or Wellgather Lilac being ushered into the meeting room on Level Six at the national stadium, having Peter Lawwell pointed-out to him by the Kilnockie FC Chairman, and being told: “whatever that man votes for, you also vote for.”

That fine journalist and trade unionist, John Nairn, famously said: “Scotland will never be free, until the last minister is strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post.” Perhaps the 2019 version of that should have minister and Sunday Post replaced by Old Firm Director and Daily Record or Scottish Sun.

Because, I am convinced, Scottish fitba will continue to struggle until we end the duopoly of the all-powerful Old Firm.

THE GUY who suffers most from the failings of the Scottish Football system, as overseen by the SFA suits is whoever is the incumbent Keeper of the Poisoned Chalice, as I like to refer to the holder of the post of National Team Manager or Head Coach.

Leaving aside temporary managers such as Dawson Walker in 1958, Malky MacDonald, Alex Ferguson, Billy Stark (the only Scotland boss with a 100% wins record), Tommy Burns and Malky Mackay, we have had 21 team managers, either full or part-time.

Stevie Clarke has probably been lucky in his timing. Unfair though much of the criticism of his predecessor was; after what the mainstream football media decided was a disastrous second coming by Alex McLeish, whoever took over was going to enjoy a fairly-lengthy honeymoon period.

All Clarke had to do was get off to a winning start – he ticked that box. Not being embarrassed by Belgium last night was another item in credit for the new boss. Now he can settle down and plan for better things next season.

Ian McColl - the Scotland boss with the best winning record

His one win from two games start has already propelled Clark to joint fifth spot in the league table of winning Scotland bosses, for which the top ten reads:

Ian McColl – 60.7% wins

The SFA Selectors – 58.7% wins

Tommy Docherty – 58.3% wins

Alex McLeish – 52.4% wins

Matt Busby – Steve Clarke – 50% wins

Willie Ormond – 47.7% wins

Craig Brown – 45.1% wins

Walter Smith – 43.8% wins

Jock Stein – 42.6% wins

Saddo that I am, I keep records of Scotland's international football matches from our first game, back in 1872. I organise these in decades, and, although there will be a handful of games later this year, for the purposes of my record-keeping, the decade, the 2010s ended with last night's game in Brussels.

Overall, since 1872, we have played 769 official full internationals. It is actually 771, but, the Ibrox Disaster Game in 1902 and the abandoned Hampden game against Austria in 1963 are discounted.

Overall, we have won 47.1% of these games. In the last decade, we won 42.9%. This is a 10% improvement from the previous decade: 2000-2009, and is, would you believe it, our third-best decade since the end of World War II, 74-years ago.

Our winning percentages per decade, since the end of WWII, in descending order are:

1950s – 47.8% wins

1960s – 46.1% wins

 

2010s – 42.9% wins

1970s – 42.1% wins

1990s – 41.6% wins

1940s – 41.2% wins

1980s – 39.8% wins

2000s – 38.8% wins

Overall, since the end of WWII, Scotland has played 581 official internationals, winning 246. This equates to 42.3% of the matches ending as wins. By that measure, we just might have turned the corner in the last decade, in spite of the best efforts of the SFA.

We might never return to the halcyon days of Scottish football's real Golden Decade – the 80s: that's the 1880s. Our record for that long-ago Victorian decade was:

Played 26 – won 22 – drew 3 – lost 1: scored 110 – conceded 32.

84.6% wins.

OK, these days are past, and in the past they must remain. But, could we, somehow, rise again to those long-ago heights. Might Steve Clarke's quiet ability to organise a team and make the best use of the available talent turn our fortunes around, and maybe, in the long term, get us back to something approaching that level of excellence?

A man can dream, and, as that long-time Tartan Army foot soldier, the Right Honourable Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond MA always insists – the dream will never die.