The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

First posted on Facebook , August 9th, 2016

Of course I had barely posted the first part and our resident Championship watcher Ally Morrison pumped in with a few names I had missed. As always, thanks Ally.

So to add to the list, there was Josh McEachran who is eligible but has not expressed an interest in doing so. Joe Bryan of Bristol City, is also eligible as is Martin Cranie at Huddersfield. Cameron Stewart of Ipswich, Jed Steer of Aston Villa are too. There is also Alex Mowatt of Leeds but like some of the others it is a question of Can play for Scotland rather than will play for Scotland as first choice nation.
Newcastle have invested in two Scots this year with the signings of Grant Hanley and Matt Ritchie and big things are expected of them both.
Norwich City were relegated from the Premiership last season and have retained the services of the four Scots in their line-up; Russell Martin. Steven Whittaker, Graham Dorrans and Steven Naismith. Naismith will perhaps feel, he owes Norwich a good season after his failure to make a real impact last year following his transfer from Everton.
Notts Forest have Danny Fox among their number but I don’t see him adding to his four Scotland caps and Oliver Burke who made a big impression coming on against Denmark at Hampden in March. On the first day of the season 18 year old Alex Iacovitti made his full debut in defence for Forest; Alex is a Scotland under 19 International. Scotland Youth International Jordan Gabriel has also been given a first team squad number this year. Also eligible is Jamie Paterson, well with a name like Jamie Charles Stuart Paterson, how could he not be?

Preston have the evergreen, Paul Gallagher (Happy Birthday Paul, who will be 32 on August 9th) who seems to have been playing in the Championship forever among their number. Here’s hoping Stevie May recovers from his injury ravaged time last season to make an impact this year and begin to reach his potential.

Having sold Matt Phillips to West Brom, QPR only have former Internationalist James Mackie at Loftus Road in their ranks.
Reading are not known for their Scottish players with only Graeme Murty ever having been capped with them, however they have four Young Scots on their books. Defender Zak Jules who has been given a squad number this year; Dominic Hyam, Thomas McIntyre and Harry Cardwell are the others. Here’s hoping they begin to knock on the first team door.

Rotherham; no Rotherham player has ever been capped by Scotland. Kirk Broadfoot has been playing at Millmoor in the last few seasons but whether Strachan would pick him again is probably unlikely. Scott Allan has recently joined on loan from Celtic; so perhaps a good season from him will see him progress to a Scotland cap.
Sheffield Wednesday of course added Steven Fletcher to the ranks of their Scottish players over the summer. It will be interesting if he develops a good working relationship with Barry Bannan. Also at Hillsborough is Liam Palmer and Ross Wallace. Wallace in particular has bene unlucky to be overlooked by Scotland Managers in the last few years. Although, capped by at England at Youth Level Lewis McGugan is also available for Scotland.
Wigan Athletic are managed by Gary Caldwell but as far as I know only young Jack Hendry who joined from Partick Thistle last year is eligible for Scotland.
Finally to Wolverhampton, where among their Youth ranks are Daniel Armstrong, Ross Finnie and Jordan Allan. Best of luck to those three for this season and to all the players we’ve noted.
I will post a first update today on last weekend’s games as I hope to do throughout the season.

David Stuart

First posted on Facebook August 8th, 2016

Each week I hope to update you all on how Scottish players are doing in the English Championship, which is becoming increasingly the most likely place for a Young Scot to make his mark. There are of course, players that play in the Premiership up here and down South but generally they are well known and more importantly, well reported. To begin with, this is a list of the current Scots in each team but there may well be others that I don’t know of or at Youth Level. If you know of any I have left out let me know. Thank you.

Aston Villa; Perhaps surprisingly, Alan Hutton has clung on to his place at Villa and has been joined in the last few days by Ross McCormack who moved for £12m last week from Fulham.
Barnsley. Things aren’t too bright down Oakwell way for Scots with no players currently, mind you no Scot has been capped with them since John Kelly in 1948.
Birmingham City; Paul Caddis and Andrew Shinnie are still regulars down at St. Andrew’s.

Blackburn in previous seasons had of course Jordan Rhodes and Grant Hanley among their number but now both have moved on to Middlesbrough and Newcastle respectively. Gordon Greer has moved from Brighton to Ewood Park in the summer and is joined in defence at right back by Stephen Hendrie who is on loan from West Ham. Stephen joined the Hammers from Hamilton in July 2015 and is still make his first team League debut. Craig Conway has been with Blackburn since 2014 but is unlikely to make a return to Scotland duty.
Brighton & Hove Albion – Winger Jamie Murphy was called into the Scotland squad for the friendlies against the Czech Republic and Denmark but was not played. Jack Harper was one of the big hopes for Scottish football, having been signed by Real Madrid but he moved to Brighton last season and he hopes to break into the first team this year. Best of luck Jack.

Brentford; former Ranger Lewis MacLeod has not had the best start to his Brentford career due to being missing most of the last season with injury, however Lewis played in their opening game on Saturday.

Bristol City; City don’t have any Scottish players but among their coaching staff ais former Livi player Jamie McAllister.
Burton Albion; Born in Edinburgh, goalkeeper Joe McLaughlin started his career in Non-League football before moving to Bradford City whom he made 125 appearances before his move to Albion in 2014 where he has played in 91 league games. Central Defender Kyle McFadzean is the brother of Callum who is currently with Kilmarnock. Callum had recently turned out for the Scotland Under-21 side after playing for England at Youth Level. His brother has represented England at ‘C’ level but whether he will pledge himself to Scotland if WGS comes a calling is yet to be seen.
Cardiff City have had a few Scots in the last few years and club Captain is goalkeeper David Marshall. The other Scot is Matty Kennedy who although only 21 has played with a few clubs already after starting out at Kilmarnock, he has also represented Scotland at all Youth Levels.
Derby County had a big Scottish contingent over the last few seasons and the two Craig’s Forsyth and Bryson are still there along with Chris Martin and Johnny Russell.
Fulham have obviously have just lost their Ross McCormack to Aston Villa but former Scotland Under-21 Tom Cairney is still there. Over the summer Kevin Macdonald joined them from Wolves signing a three year deal. Kevin has been called up for a couple of squads by Gordon Strachan but has yet to make his Scotland debut. Former Aberdeen player Jack Grimmer has been at Craven Cottage since 2012 but has yet to make a full impact and has spent some seasons out on loan.

Huddersfield Town have Will Boyle on their books but he is on a season loan to Kilmarnock.
At Ipswich, there is only Christophe Berra; Ryan Fraser who did so well last season on loan from Bournemouth has returned to his parent club. It will be interesting to see if he features this season with the departure of Matt Ritchie to Newcastle.
Leeds United have of course a distinguished record of Scots in their sides. Defender Liam Cooper was given a call up for the Denmark game and here’s hoping he will progress over the next season. Former Motherwell player Lee Erwin is currently out on a season loan to Oldham. Leeds also have in their youth ranks, the Mackay twins Paul and Jack who are eligible for Scotland.
(Part 2 coming soon).

First posted on Facebook, August 16th, 2016

Happy Birthday to ‘Galls’ who turned 37 today. I’m sure Paul is fondly remembered by fans of Dundee United, Dunfermline, St. Mirren and Partick Thistle but perhaps not so much down at Carrow Road way, Norwich. Paul was capped 8 times for Scotland all coming in the Berti Vogts era of from 2002 to 2004, whilst he was a Dundee United player.
Paul was given his chance with Scotland in May 2002, a few months into Berti’s reign as Scotland faced the might of the Hong Kong League XI. Ok, ‘might’ is probably too strong a word perhaps the duff Hong Kong League XI would be more accurate. However, let the record show that Berti did indeed record a victory in a game for the first time in Hong Kong as Scotland ran out 4-0 winners. As for Gallacher he was given 14 minutes at the end of the game replacing Celtic’s Rab Douglas. Surely one of Gallacher’s claims to fame must be that he played in the same National side
as Scotland and Chelsea legend Warren Cummings.
Paul’s next game would come in October as he became the regular second choice to Douglas. Paul played in Scotland’s 3-1 win over Canada at Easter Road with two goals from Dunfermline’s Stevie Crawford and one from United team mate Steven Thompson.
He was then given the second half of a friendly against the Republic of Ireland that saw Neill Sullivan gain his last cap for Scotland and be replaced by Gallacher for the second half at Hampden. Scotland were to lose 2-0 with both goals coming in the first half; so technically a clean sheet for Galls.
Gallacher would only ever play in one competitive match for Scotland, which was in April 2003 in a Euro Qualifier in Kaunas, Lithuania. Scotland lost one nil to a 73rd minute penalty; this was only a few days after the Lithuanians had gained a draw in Nuremberg with Germany 1-1.
Gallacher would then feature in three friendly losses; two at home to Austria and then Romania before a third loss away to Denmark (Berti loved to play friendlies; he just couldn’t win them – P19 W4 D3 L12 F17 A34).
He would see victory in his final game as Scotland beat Estonia in May 2004 due to a solitary goal by James McFadden.
George Burley would recall Gallacher back into the Scotland set up for a friendly against Wales during his days with St. Mirren but sadly that was it for Paul.
So Happy Birthday to the Paul and all the best.

Two great players; one great occasion. Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, both of Manchester United, swap shirts at the end of the annual Scotland – England game. This photo was taken in April, 1965 from a game that saw Scotland go two down after thirty five minutes through goals from Charlton and Jimmy Greaves. Denis would pull one back just before half time and early in the second half Ian St. John equalised. The game ended 2-2

First posted on Facebook, August 14th, 2016

Continuing our series of Scotland players and their debut games; this time it’s Billy Bremner. Billy was first capped on 8th May, 1965. He was only the second Leeds United player to be capped for Scotland; Bobby Collins had been recalled to the Scotland team for the first time in six years the month before, due to a renaissance in his career and therefore became the first.
Billy lined up in midfield alongside Bobby and also making his debut was John Hughes of Celtic for a friendly against Spain at Hampden. The game ended nil nil but was a rather feisty affair. Gair Henderson of the Evening Times states “Scotland – the dirtiest team in Europe.” He then cites two recent games at Hampden that ended in brawls, the game against Uruguay in 1962 where apparently the ref ended the game writhing on the ground having been punched by an unknown Scotland player and then the match with Austria in 1963 that was abandoned when a free for all got out hand and was ended with 11 minutes to go.
As to this Spanish game, Gair felt the ref was too lenient on the Scots, who he describes as thugs. In the 38th minute Denis Law clashed with a Spanish player Zoco, leaving the Spaniard writhing on the ground. Once, he recovered Zoco hobbled twenty yards up to Law and clocked him one on the jaw. Law did not retaliate and the ref sent Zoco off but there then followed a melee and the Spanish team would not accept the ordering off unless Law was sent off too. Remarkably Zoco was allowed to stay on the field. Henderson goes on to say that Law, Alex Hamilton, John Grieg and Bremner were all guilty of overly aggressive play.
Spanish defender Reija was sent off in the 88th minute for what was described as disgusting tackle on Bremner. According to Henderson though, despite saying “he still gives the impression that he must make up for his lack of inches with aggressive action”, Billy was still one of the better players on show.
Within days of this game, Ian McColl was sacked by the SFA and replaced by Jock Stein for the vital World Cup games that were to follow later in the month; away to both Poland and Finland. Jock would not choose Billy for these matches and it would be October that year before he gained his second cap, unfortunately this was in the 2-1 defeat to Poland at Hampden in the World Cup. However, Billy would become a regular after this game.
John Greig would be the Captain of the team up until a friendly in October 1968 against Denmark in Copenhagen where Billy was given this honour by Bobby Brown. Greig was still included in the team for this game and subsequent ones too. Billy would score his first Scotland goal in his very next game as Scotland beat Austria 2-1 in our opening game of the 1970 World Cup Qualifiers. Billy would captain Scotland a total of 39 times, only George Young who led Scotland 48 times has surpassed this.
It is perhaps ironic that where his Captaincy begun it all ended as Billy would be banned for life from the Scotland team following a minor fracas in a Copenhagen nightclub and the subsequent fallout from that.
It was a sad end to a great Scotland career. Billy will be forever known as one of the Scotland greats.

David Stuart

Issue 5 of the Epistles mag came out a few weeks ago and is ticking over quite nicely however we still need to generate a lot more sales if we are to break even.
So what’s in it this time? A ot of stuff this time round.
From the pen of Robert Marshall we have a look at the British Championship, nicknames of Scotland players (w**ker isn’t a nickname) and a few rants and rambles. From myself there’s a feature on the Scots in the NASL, a statistical review of the 1970’s and a look at who has played the most World Cup minutes.
Easton Thain discusses his pathological hatred for the Lithuania national team and also recalls the 1970 Youth World Cup held in Scotland.
Kevin Donnelly tells a tale of Badges, Scott Kelly lists ten magical moments with the Tartan Army very few of which are about football. Scott Cockburn discusses the future for the National Stadium and finally there’s even an article written about the matches against the Auld Enemy written by all things; an Englishmen!
So what are you waiting for, get on ebay and get yer copy early next week, or better still get all five for £11 including postage.
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First posted on Facebook , August 11th, 2016

Happy Birthday to Neil McCann who will be 42 today. Neil played 26 times for Scotland and had it not been for injuries blighting his career I’m sure he could have easily reached double that. Neil made his debut for Scotland in September 1998 against Lithuania in a Euro Qualifier in Vilnius coming on for a certain Ally McCoist of Kilmarnock. By the time of his second cap, Neil would be a Rangers player whom he gained 15 of his caps with; his other 10 would be with Southampton.
He would score three goals for Scotland, his first coming in the 88th minute to give Scotland a 1-0 victory in Riga against Latvia in a vital World Cup Qualifier.His other two would come in Euro Qualifiers under Berti Vogts in September 2003 scoring firstly against the Faroes in a 3-1 win and then scoring against Germany in Dortmund in a 2-1 defeat a few days later.
Happy Birthday Neil, if it is indeed your birthday as I’ve seen it listed as being in November and all the best.

First posted on Facebook, August 11th, 2016

Robert Fleck will turn 51 today. It’s fair to say that Robert’s Scotland career is a bit odd and perhaps belonged more to the esoteric days of the fifties; where more often than not, players came and disappeared from the Scotland scene quite quickly. In 1958 Jimmy Murray of Hearts and Stewart Imlach of Notts Forest played in two games of the World Cup in Sweden but would only gain 5 and 4 caps respectively. Robert would only play 4 times for Scotland and 2 of these were at the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
Robert moved to Norwich City from Rangers in 1987 for just under £600,000 and soon the striker established himself as a fans favourite. Robert had gained 4 Under-21 caps with Rangers and would earn 3 more as a Norwich player, scoring 3 goals.
He made his debut for the full International team in March 1990 against Argentina at Hampden as did Stuart McCall and Craig Levein, both of whom would also feature in Italia ’90. Scotland won 1-0 with Stewart McKimmie providing a memorable moment in 32nd minute.
Robert would not feature in Scotland’s next five games but would return to the starting line-up in June 16th in the Stadio Luigi Ferraris, Genoa to face Sweden in the must win game following Scotland’s disastrous start to the competition with a defeat to Costa Rica. Stuart McCall would give Scotland the lead in the 10th minute but it would take until 81st minute and a penalty for Scotland to grab a second. Fleck was involved, with a pinpoint pass inside the area to Roy Aitken whose initial shot was blocked before he was tripped going for the rebound. Mo Johnston would convert the penalty and although Sweden would score a few minutes later, Scotland held out for a memorable win.
Robert would not start in what would be the final game as Scotland faced Brazil. Andy Roxburgh having started with Alan McInally in the Costa Rica game and then Robert Fleck alongside Maurice Johnston but for this final game he played Ally McCoist with Mo. It is perhaps indicative of Roxburgh in this period, as he never seemed to know what his starting eleven should have been. Robert would come on in 77th minute for McCoist with the scores tied at 0-0, however Scotland were to lose a poor goal four minutes later to exit the tournament.
Robert would play one more game for Scotland in 1991 playing 75 minutes in a dismal 1-0 defeat to the USSR at Ibrox in 1991. Robert would go on to be Norwich City’s Player of the Year in season 1991-92 but would never again pull on the dark blue of Scotland. Robert would move to Chelsea in 1992 for £2.1m before returning to Norwich a second time, a couple of seasons later and then finishing his League career at Reading.
Robert continues to live in Norwich and is a teaching assistant in a school for “children with complex needs”. A lot was expected of his nephew John Fleck but the former Rangers player has not been able to live up to early expectations but he has played over 40 games in each of last few seasons for Coventry and earned himself a three year contract at Sheffield United recently, so maybe there’s still time for him yet.
Anyway, Happy Birthday Robert and all the best.

David Stuart