Internationals - Totally Different Gravy

I HAVE THIS WEEK started my training for the Euros – by watching international football – with mixed results.

Scotland v Gibraltar found me wondering how it happened – that Scotland, the nation of Hughie Gallacher, Lawrie Reilly, Denis Law and Ally McCoist has sunk so low that against opposition who would not worry an average Auchinleck Talbot side, they could not hit a coo on the erse wi' a banjo, rather than the 192 square feet of the goal area.

Eventually we did score the two goals which guaranteed victory; however, two goals, and only four shots on-target, from some 24 efforts on goal is not an international-class return.

Our two goals were certainly finished with aplomb, but, I would be loath to criticise our strikers, I felt, over the entire 90 minutes, the service they go was rank rotten and too-often non-existent. Our midfield had an off-day, John McGinn was a peripheral player, while Billy Gilmour, perhaps our midfield creator best-equipped to play the “killer pass” - for me he plays too deep.

Our problems on the right flank were also obvious. I would not wish to criticise Ross McCrorie, who had a sound debut. But, he's primarily a defender, he has spent the bulk of his career in central defence, before, since his move south,being converted to a right wing back. However, breaking forward and creating is a bit of an alien concept to him; if we have to have a go-forward threat wide on the right, then I think the under-rated Anthony Ralston is the better bet.

Premier Sport did a competent job of broadcasting the game; they told it like it is. How different from the coverage of the next international – England v Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Like the Scotland game, this was in effect a pre-season warm-up, albeit one being played at the end of a campaign. I dare say Gareth Southgate knows who will be the bulk of his squad in Germany – same as Stevie Clarke knows who will be the bulk of the Scotland squad.

The only question for both managers is – which players will fill the last few places in the 26-man squad. They will worry about their teams for the first game when they get to Germany. So, it stood to reason, we were going to see experimentation from Southgate at St James Park.

In which case, the over-hyping and over-kill from the Channel 4 team covering the game was cringe-worthy. However, that's one of the main burden England teams have to carry.

Their media cheer-leaders build England up as potential winners before every tournament. However, their record of one win in 34 World Cup or European Championship campaigns rather categorises their efforts as much ado about nothing. For all the shouting, boosting and high hopes, it is now nearly 58 years since that single victory.

Still England expects, and nobody expects more than their media. Also, when they don't live up to expectations, Fleet Street is always in the vanguard of those calling for the head of their Manager.

My third international of the week was Tuesday afternoon's Israel v Scotland women's international from Budapest. This was played behind closed doors at what looked like a junior ground and, as such, the atmosphere was somewhat unreal.

I would not say the women were as far on top as the men had been the previous day, but, they still dominated play to excess. The difference was, they took more chances, with Martha Thomas stealing the show with four goals in our 5-0 win. What's happening in Scotland these days, we've barely got a male striker who can bother that coo's erse, while we've got women who score for fun.

IF THE INTERNATIONAL game is currently driving the football narrative, as we gear up for the Euros, domestically, the troubles up in Inverness are to a degree encouraging our football hacks to come up with something other than their annual summer game of making-up stories about which big money foreign mercenary is about to join one or other of the Bigot Brothers.

It took an elephantine digestion period to bring Inverness Caledonian Thistle into the world, and I amreliably informed, there are still people in the so=called Capital of the Highlands whose loyalty to one or other of the rival sides who were combined into the new club, who refuse to set foot inside Caledonia Stadium.

But, by the way they climbed through the leagues to the Premier Division, the new club – along with neighbours Ross County demonstrated the value of new blood coming into a hitherto moribound lower league system.

Looking on from afar, I fear ICT's troubles really began when they got there, and tasted some success by winning the Scottish Cup. On the way up, they were generally a homespun outfit, giving the better players from the top third of the country a platform on which to show their abilities.

But, once into the top league, they decided to follow the lead of the other “diddy teams”. They had decidedto ape the practices of the Big Two. They could afford to buy-in second rate non-Scots for their squads, so the DTs, including ICT, in trying to keep-up, bought-in third and fourth rate mercenaries.

The problem for the Inverness club then was, these incomers had to be housed, in an area where housing is notoriously more-expensive than in the Central Belt, and where they found themselves, to a degree, competing for the few homes on the market, with cash-rich “White Settlers” - cashing-in on the windfall they had made from selling their old home in the Sudentenland and moving north, to take advantage of the better social welfare system we have in Scotland.

So, suddenly, non-local playefrs were less keen to move up the A9, performances dropped off and the club has, in a relatively short time, dropped two leagues. Now, suddenly, shocked at the backlash against a plan to relocate their training base to Fife, there are fears for the club's future, its survival even.

The fact is, away from the traditonal big four cities – Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland struggles to justify full-time football clubs. Indeed, I have long felt, a genuine challenge to the Big Two will never happen until we revert to just one big club in both Dundee and Edinburgh – and we get a proper Combined Bargaining Agreement in place to counteract the financial pull of the Big Two.

Getting ICT back to the big league will be a long-term job. A good place to start would be to jettison the incomers, perhaps revert to part-time for a spell, and promote local talent.

Put much of the energy into a well-run Academy system, but, while the youngsters develop and mature, a period in the lower reaches might be no bad thing.

FINALLY – I will give tonight's Scotland v Finland game a body swerve, in favour of a Rugby Union match. I will be watching the final of the FOSROC Super Series Sprint competition, between Ayrshire Bulls and Stirling Wolves, on BBC ALBA.

I will record events at Hampden, and watch later. The rugby match matters, more than a Friendly, in which, I suspect, a good number of the home team might be disinclined to burst a gut, in case it costs them their place in Germany.

Any way, long experience has taught me – we rarely play well in friendlies; I have endured some stinkers over the years.