ANDY MITCHELL or Douglas Gorman I am not, but I do enjoy delving into the rich history of Scottish Football. Indeed given the parlous state of our game in this third decade of the 21st century, there is something comforting in looking back to the days when Scotland was a genuine force in the Beautiful Game.
Back in 2018 I was doing a 90th Anniversary of the Original Wembley Wizards piece, when a snippet from the Daily Record picqued my attention. This was an aside to the effect that when the half-time score from Wembley (England 0 – Scotland 2) was announced at Ibrox, where Rangers were in the process of beating Clyde 3-1, it produced the biggest roar of the day.
That will seem strange to modern eyes. The perception these days is that Rangers supporters are, to a man, England fans in disguise. But, surely the stranger thing is – there was a full Scottish First Division programme going on that day.
OK, there were only three Scotland-based players in the victorious XI at Wembley: goalkeeper Jack Harkness (Queen's Park), inside-right Tim Dunn (Hibs) and outside-left Alan Morton (Rangers), but I reckon, from memory, it was only in the 1970 that clubs were given a dispensation to re-arrange matches – when they had three or more players in an international squad.
Nowadays, complete swathes of fixtures are cancelled when there are internationals on the agenda. To me, this does not make sense. Scotland are in Croatia on Saturday, so why cannot we have a full programme of domestic games played. After all, it's not as if Stevie Clarke calls on Scottish-based players, only seven of his squad for the games against Croatia and Portugal are home-based and of these, only Hearts (2) and Celtic (also 2 now that Greg Taylor has pulled out) contribute more than a single player to the squad.
You look at Rugby Union, where both Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh are expected to contribute a full team of players to a Scotland squad and still play league games. After all, if our 12 top-flight teams can register 399 professionals and only 7 of them are on Scotland-duty, 1400 miles from Glasgow, what's stopping them from putting-on a full domestic programme on Saturday?
As it stands, there are only two domestic SPFL fixtures scheduled for Saturday. I fear this might be a mistake on the part of the SFA and the League. What happens if a lot of the displaced fans decide to get their Saturday Fitba Fix by taking in something like a West of Scotland League game, and realise, they are getting better entertainment and more bang for their buck there?
There are some tasty-looking South Challenge Cup Third Round ties on the calendar, I can tell you.
When I was a boy the senior football season began in August and was effectively done and dusted by the end of April. The Juniors mind you, worked to a different calendar. I remember, back when he had hair on his head rather than his chin, Chick Young announcing: “This season's Junior Football shutdown will be on a Wednesday”. I remember one season covering one Ayrshire side's first pre-season friendly one July Saturday, then Auchinleck Talbot's final cup final of the previous season the following Wednesday.
With these blank weekends for internationals, the postponed games will have to be played on a midweek, which will mean additional costs for floodlighting, police overtime and so forth. Surely, if Scotland is in Zagreb, it makes sense to tive the stay-at-home fans games to go to at 3pm on a Saturday. You never know, it might catch on.
IN A RECENT BLOG I was somewhat scathing as to the talents of Rangers' wide man Vaclav Cerny. I reckoned, on the evidence of his early displays in blue that he wasn't Rangers Class.
He has quickly discovered, expectations are high when you patrol the wider areas of Ibrox,you are being judged against legends such as Alan Morton, Willie Waddell, Alex Scott, Willie Henderson, Davie Wilson, Willie Johnston, Davie Cooper and Brian Laudrop – and that judgement is being carried out by a support which demands, rather than expects excellence.
However, watching Cerny against St Johnstone on Sunday night, I got an idea that maybe there was more to the Croat than I had initially thought. He took his goals well and looked a much better player than previously.
Maybe he is starting to find his feet in the crazy world of Scottish Football. I think there is a player in there, simply struggling to get out. It certainly does not help that the current Rangers squad is very-much a work-in-progress, in the face of impatient, over-critical fans.
SEVENTY YEARS or so ago, Scottsh Football was supposed to catch up with the modern world. Embarrassed by doings at the hands of Hungary and Uruguay the English FA and the SFA decided to inaugurate Under-23 games, to help develop the next generation of young talent and feed them into international football.
Thus, on 8 February, 1955 the nations met, at Shawfield, for their first meeting at this level. The game finished 6-0 to England, the win mainly down to a second-half hat-trick from the great Duncan Edwards of Manchester United. It would be fair to say, Scotland centre-half Doug Baillie never really recovered from the Hell which the legendary Busby Babe put him through that night.
However, four of that beaten Scottish team: Alex Parker, Eric Caldow, Dave Mackay and Graham Leggat went on to wear the full team's kit with distinction. The full Scotland team that night was: Willie Duff (Hearts); Parker (Falkirk), Caldow (Rangers), Mackay (Hearts) Baillie (Airdrie), Bobby Holmes (St Mirren), Leggat (Aberdeen), Jimmy Walsh (Celtic), Ally Hill (Clyde), Bobby Wishart (Aberdeen), Davie McParland (Partick Thistle).
Nine of the England team, by the way, went on to become full internationalists.
In the pre-game preview, the Glasgow Herald pointed-out that the entire Scotland team, with the exception of Caldow, were already first-team regulars with their clubs.
Compare that with today, where hardly any of the latest Scotland Under-21 squad are even household names in their own households; 6 of the 25 players named are on-loan to lower-ranked clubs that their original sides and the squad includes Rangers' third-ranked and Celtic's fourth-ranked goalkeepers.
As part of their Player Development Programme, the SFA has initiated the formation of a number of Performance Schools across Scotland. These are at: Aberdeen's Hazlehead Academy, Dundee's St John's RC High School, Edinb urgh's Broughton High School, Falkirk's Graeme High School, Glasgow's Holyrood Secondary, Kilmarnock's Gtrange Academy and Motherwell's Braidhurst High School.
This programme has been running since 2012 and has brought through the grand total of one player – Napoli's Billy Gilmour, the only member of Stevie Clarke's current squad who is a Performance Schools graduate.
That's an awful lot of money spent on developing one player, even if, Gilmour is a wee bit special.
I also had a look at the make-up of the current full Scotland squad. Of the 23 players in the squad, 14 are graduates from the Under-21 team, on average taking just over two years to graduate to the full team. But there is no set pattern to this promotion. Some players, such as Ben Doak James Forrest or Grant Hanley are promoted quite-quickly. Others such as Ryan Porteous can take up to five years to graduate to full honours.
Maybe we need a half-way house between the Under-21 and full teams, Berti Vogts certainly thought so, when he came up with a German-style Scotland Development Team, but that idea didn't fit with how we have always done things here – just as the Scotland B team, a concept first tried in 1952, and which, in five seasons, was the breeding ground for two full teams of capped players – never caught on.
I fear we simply have to face it, we Scots don't do player development, or even planning for such development, at all well. We prefer to trust to luck, it's the Scottish way apparently.
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