The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

1st May 2015 is the 65th birthday of one of Scotland’s greatest ever defenders – Daniel Fergus McGrain. Danny won 62 caps for Scotland between 1973 and 1982 and played at two World Cup Finals – injury kept him out of Argentina 78.

He was an attacking full back which made him exciting to watch as well as being extremely effective. He was also both courageous on and off the pitch in dealing with serious injuries and diabetes. I saw him play in what was his final Scotland match – the 2-2 draw against the Soviet Union in the 1982 World Cup Finals in Malaga, Spain. I wish I had taken some decent photographs of the occasion.

Scotland v. the U.S.S.R. – that’s another fixture we’ll never see again – unless Putin’s expansionist plans continue unchecked. Four times we played the Soviets, twice in Glasgow – either side of a game in Moscow and a World Cup Finals match in Malaga and never did we manage to overcome the evil Empire. Where were Han Solo and Luke Skywalker when you needed them?

Despite being in the middle of a cold war we invited them over to Hampden in May 1967 for a friendly match which they duly won 2-0 with the legendary goalie Lev Yashin keeping Law, Lennox and Wallace at bay. Indeed this reverse was despite Scotland calling upon the skills of no less than seven players from Celtic who two weeks later would win the European Cup. [I’m no Celtic fan but I love being able to say that a SCOTTISH team were Champions of Europe. Love it! Love it! Love it!] Anyway, it was interesting to note that all five of the other players utilised were Anglos including skipper Jim Baxter who was at Sunderland at the time.

I’ve no idea what the gong looks like that messrs Zidane, Desailly, Deschamps and co picked up at France 98 but here’s an image of my winners medal from that World Cup. OK so it’s actually a souvenir key-ring fob that was given out to perhaps five or ten thousand of us, but hey it was a big squad we had back then.The squad was of course the Tartan Army, and the ‘medal’ was for being voted the friendliest fans of the tournament.

I wonder how many of us have held on to our award, an award that no England [or Russian, or Serbian or Greek] fan is ever likely to win.Isn’t it just typical that we never got a chance to defend our title at Japan/South Korea 2002?

If you take a look at the Scotland ticket stubs from recent World Cup and Euro Championship qualifying campaigns you’ll see that they contain the associated SFA-approved catchy [or non-catchy] slogan. Currently it is ‘We are Scotland’ – just in case you thought we were Upper Volta or the Cook Islands. Easy enough error to make I suppose.

For the 2014 World Cup campaign it was ‘Hampden will Roar’ [ not during the four out of five home qualifiers that were win-less it didn’t] whilst for Euro 2012 it was ‘We stand together’. Our ‘togetherness’ with Craig Levein and his management team started to dissipate however after the infamous ‘strikerless ‘ match in Prague against the Czech Republic.

This is not one of mine but was posted on TAMB by a guy called Toepoke. It’s from a Radio Times World Cup 1974 special. On the cover staunch Scotsman Billy Bremner seems to be gritting his teeth as Jimmy Hill places a hand on his shoulder, still it could have been worse it could have been Jimmy Saville. I wonder if the juxtaposition of one of Scotland’s all time heroes with one of our Auld Enemies affected sales and how many young Scots cut the page in half for their scrap books (Scrapbooking; it’s a 70’s thing).

Inside it promises exclusive colour pictures of soccer’s superstars and a guide to the 16 finalists. Needless to say England never qualified for World Cup ’74, (needless maybe but still fun to say).
Finally why no badge on the Scotland strip or is it just a shop bought cheap effort?

Football has inspired a number of theatrical productions over the years with Celtic, Rangers and Partick Thistle all getting in on the act. I can only recall one Scotland play however – from 1982 entitled ‘The Game’ – it was set in a Glasgow living-room against the background of the 1978 World Cup Finals and was a tragi-comedy in three Acts [Act 1-Peru, Act 2-Iran and Act 3-the Netherlands ].

The author’s programme notes suggest that football has become a surrogate religion for the working man, who needs the thought of the game on Saturday to get him through the rest of the week. In addition, he argues that the violence of Scots fans invading Wembley should be contrasted with the much more insidious violence of those who are transforming Scotland into Britain ’s nuclear dustbin. As such, ‘The Game’ attempts to integrate politics with entertainment.

It is now 25 years since a crowd of 21,868 at Hampden Park said cheerio to the German Democratic Republic [aka East Germany]. On 25th April Scotland played an Italia 90 warm-up game against the former Communist/Totalitarian state and duly lost 0-1 thanks to a penalty converted by Thomas Doll.
East Germany would play only two more matches – against Brazil and Belgium – before re-unification with the west.Manager and style guru Andy Roxburgh gave a debut cap to Gary McAllister that day whilst Craig Levein won cap number two.
Alex McLeish skippered the side whose forwards Gordon Durie, Mo Johnston and substitute Ally McCoist all failed to penetrate a footballing ‘Berlin Wall’.Not to worry though as the previous month we had defeated World Cup holders Argentina 1-0 in another Italia 90 warm-up at Hampden.

As well as being a dinosaur who struggles with new technology I also don’t like lager. It’s Tartan Special [or McEwan’s Export] for me when I can find pubs in Glasgow and beyond that actually sell the stuff. As such I was almost moved to tears when I recently re-discovered an advert for Tartan Special on the reverse of the Cyprus-Scotland programme from 1989 – the world cup qualifier in which Richard Gough netted the winner about two days into stoppage time.

Another Scotland-Brazil match, another hard luck story, and another colourful, evocative image. This time it’s the opening match of the 1998 World Cup Finals in the Stade de France, Paris on 10th June.I was amongst the 80,000 which saw Cesar Sampaio give the defending World Champions the lead after only four minutes. There was no Scotland collapse though and before half-time the pacy Kevin Gallacher won us a penalty which was converted by the posy John Collins.