The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

The Tommy Lawrence picture posted a few days ago came from the above magazine but there was some other Scottish interest in it and I thought I would show them too.

Inside Forward Bobby Hope of West Brom is probably not a name synonymous with the Scotland team, although he featured in a few Scottish football card sets of the late 60’s. Bobby played over 350 games for West Brom and also went on to play for Birmingham City, Philadelphia Atoms and the Dallas Tornadoes and in between a stint at Sheffield Wednesday.

Bobby must surely have one of the shortest debut games in Scotland history having started a match. In May 1968, Bobby started against Netherlands in Amsterdam but was subbed after only 12 minutes, when Jimmy Smith, then of Aberdeen, playing his first game came on. The game finished nil nil. However, unlike Celtic’s John Kennedy who suffered a similar fate in 2004, Bobby did get another game for Scotland. In October 1968, Bobby lined up against Denmark in Copenhagen in a match that saw debuts given to Jim Herriot, Tommy McLean and Colin Stein. Bobby Lennox scored the only goal of the night and that was the end of Bobby’s international career.

A few pages on and it’s a young Bruce Rioch in his Aston Villa playing days that is featured. Remarkably Bruce had been signed from Luton for £100,000 and had been bought by future Scotland manager Tommy Docherty during his ill-fated tenure at Villa Park. In fact most of Tommy’s managerial appointments could be described as ill-fated except perhaps his management of Scotland. Of course, Bruce wasn’t capped until he was playing at Derby County and it was Willie Ormond who picked him.

On to the back page and it’s Ian Ure during his time with Arsenal, similar to Peter Marinello and Charlie Nicholas, Ure’s time at Arsenal never reached the heights it was hoped to. His time at Arsenal is mainly remembered for some high profile mistakes. Ian earned 11 caps for Scotland and eight of them came when he was with Dundee, the team he had won the Scottish First Division with and also reached the Semi-Finals of the European Cup.
There is also a short article on Willie Wallace inside, saying that he no longer wishes to be chosen to play for Scotland as he felt there “ is no point in being a Scottish reserve, with no chance of playing”.