REGULAR READERS of this blog need no additional reminder that I have a wee thing about goalkeepers and goalkeeping. The current situation around who will wear the number one Scotland jersey in Vaduz tonight strikes me as being our worst goalkeeping crisis for 64 or 65 years.
History Lesson: After sitting through 24 straight internationals, Bill Brown had won the first of what would be, at the time, a record 28 caps, against France, in our final game of a disastrous campaign in the 1958 World Cup Finals. But, by April, 1960, he had only played in five of Scotland's next eight games, because his club, Tottenham Hotspur had refused to release him for the other three.
They again told the SFA that Brown and team-mats Dave Mackay and John White would not be released to play against England on 9 April, 1960. The Scottish Selectors convened and named their team, with Rangers' George Niven named as Brown's replacement and set to win his first cap.
Niven, however, was suffering from a persistent back injury, which again flared-up and, a couple of days before the game, he was withdrawn and replaced by another debutant, Celtic's Frank Haffey, who played in a match which finished 1-1.
Fast forward 12 months. His fantastic club form for Airdrie, plus probably some SFA reaction to Tottenham's repeated refusal to release their three Scottish stars, had seen Lawrie Leslie become Scotland Number One. He was named in the team to travel to Wembley in April, 1961, however, he sustained a facial injury in a club game and with one eye totally shut, he was withdrawn from the team.
Tottenham again refused to release Brown, Niven was again injured, so, for the second successive year – Haffey got a late call-up; the rest is a sorry episode in Scottish football history.
In 1963, Scotland arranged what was then a near-annual treat, a short, three game end of season tour of Europe, in which they would face Norway, Republic of Ireland and Spain. Brown opted to miss the tour, to go to South Africa with Tottenham; Dave Mackay stuck with Scotland, while John White, after initially opting for the Scotland tour, changed his mind and joined Brown and Spurs in South Africa.
With Brown out, Scotland had a goalkeeping problem and two uncapped goalkeepers went on the tour – Burnley's Adam Blacklaw and Liverpool's Tommy Lawrence. Both, however, had come through the Under-23 team and were first-team regulars with their clubs in the top-flight in England. This is a state of affairs which is totally alien to Stevie Clarke.
The principal difference between then and now is that back then, the SFA had a line of succession. The Selectors didn't name a 22 or 23 man squad for each game back then, they would name a team and a reserve team. When Niven was named for the 1960 match, Haffey was named as reserve – he was the Under-23 goalkeeper at the time. There was an established line of successon.
Today, the Head Coach names his squad, generally naming three goalies – but when, as now, the first and second-choices are injured and the third suffers PTSD or Shell Shock, then suddenly the Head Coach has to earn his big salary.
Let's look at today's line of succession for the Scotland team:
Craig Gordon - (currently injured)
Angus Gunn – (currently injured)
Liam Kelly – (currently injured)
Zander Clark – (currently injured)
Robbie McCrorie – (currently injured)
Cieran Slicker – (PTSD – shell shock)
Ross Doohan – (without a club and second-choice at his last club)
Callan McKenna – (18 years old, untried)
This goalkeeping crisis is unprecedented in the 150-years-plus history of Scottish International Football. I believe only once before, certainly in my lifetime, when Scotland has had to make such a left-field goalkeeping selection as the Doohan/McKenna call-ups. That was in 1948, when Southampton's Ian Black, then a 24-year-old with fewer than 20 first team appearances was called-up to face England, at Hampden. Legend has it he had the game of his life in front of one of the SFA Selectors in a league game. The Selector had gone to watch another potential Scotland player, but had been so-impressed by Black, he persuaded the rest of the Selection Committee to pick him for what would be his only cap.
One further sign of how badly we are off for potential international goalkeepers comes from a list of the Scottish Premier Division goalkeepers in the final fixtures of this season:
Celtic – Kasper Schmeichel (Danish)
Rangers – Jack Butland (English)
Hibernian – Jordan Smith (English)
Dundee United – Dave Richards (Welsh)
Aberdeen – Dimitar Mitov (Bulgarian)
St Mirren – Zach Hemming (English)
Hearts – Zander Clark (Scottish) – injured after 22 minuts, replaced by fellow Scot Ryan Fulton
Motherwell – Ellery Balcombe (English)
Kilmarnock – Robbie McCrorie (Scottish)
Dundee – Trevor Carson (Northern Irish)
Ross County – Jordan Amissah (German)
St Johnstone – Ross Sinclair (Scottish)
So, 13 goalkeepers: 4 Scots, 4 English, 1 each from Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Northern Ireland and Wales in our top domestic league, while, as far as I can see, Slicker is the only Scot anywhere close to getting a game for an English Premiership club.
Slicker is listed on the SFA website in the Under-21 squad, along with fellow goalkeepers Jack Newman (Livingston) and Vincent Angelini (Al-Riyadh). Thus, we should perhaps regard the current situation as a complete one-of, a tsunami of injuries and bad luck conspiring to land us in really deep doo-dah.
Maybe, if our football writers did their homework, they would admit, Stevie Clarke is in uncharted waters here and maybe he deserves a bit of understanding and sympathy rather than calls for his sacking – because, as thing stand – who else could do better?
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