The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

At the start of season 1983-’84, Shoot! Magazine released a set of Football Fact Cards. Card number 11 was Scottish Stars with a picture of Kenny Dalglish on the front and a set of Scotland International Facts for the period 1973-’84, which make for some interesting reading.
Top scorers for the period were; Kenny Dalglish with 26, then Joe Jordan with 11 and to show how shoddy our back up strikers were, three midfielders follow next on 7 each. Archie Gemmill, John Robertson and John Wark. These were followed by Andy Gray (6) and then Gordon McQueen and Don Masson on 5 each.
Dalglish also tops the most appearances with 80, then Danny McGrain with 57, Alan Rough with 51, Joe Jordan with 50, then a bit of a surprise Asa Hartford with 44, Archie Gemmill with 36 and then Graeme Souness with 35.
Capped with most clubs was Joe Jordan and Archie Gemmill with three each, nowadays the likes of Alan Hutton and Shaun Maloney have five each and there’s possibly somebody else with more.
Youngest capped player in the period was Andy Gray at 20 years and 2 weeks but the likes of Derek Johnstone and Derek Parlane had been capped at a younger age just prior to 1973. The oldest in the period was of course Denis Law who played at the age of 34 but he was capped much younger than Andy Gray way back in 1958.
Then, finally there was Fantastic Facts; the last time there was all home-based internationals team was in May, 1966 which was beaten 3-0 by the Netherlands at Hampden. However, in his first game in charge Jock Stein played a team of all Anglos, when Scotland beat Norway 3-2 in October, 1978.
A final King Kenny fact was that from May 6th, 1976 to February 25th, 1981; Dalglish appeared in 43 consecutive Internationals. Will we ever see his like again?
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