The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

On December 24th it will be 30 years to the day that Erich Schaedler took his life in the Cardrona Forest in the Scottish Borders. Erich was a part of the famous Turnbull Tornadoes Hibs team of the 1970’s. He was a very strong and very fast full back who gained only one full Scottish Cap.

Erich was capped by Willie Ormond a few months before the 1974 World Cup in a friendly against host nation West Germany. This was particularly poignant for Erich as his father was a German P.O.W. who elected to remain in Scotland after the war. Scotland lost 2-1 with the Germans grabbing two goals in quick succession with a Paul Breitner penalty in 33 minutes, followed by a Jurgen Grabowski goal two minutes later. Kenny Dalglish netted in the 77th minute to pull one back.

Willie Ormond must have seen something in his display that night as he chose him in his final 22 players for the World Cup but with Danny McGrain and Sandy Jardine at their peak as a partnership there was never any real chance of him getting a game except for injury to those two, which never happened. After the World Cup McGrain and Jardine continued their dominance for the full back positions for the next year or so and Erich dropped out of the picture altogether.

I have to admit that at the time of his death I was unaware that it had occurred but in the excellent book ‘Shades: the Short Life and Tragic Death of Erich Schaedler’ by Colin Leslie; it does mention about how little media attention was given to the story at the time and how the subject of suicide was taboo and not talked about.

Throughout the book his ex-team mates talk very affectionately of Erich but also their sense of loss is still quite raw for them; unable to come to terms with the likeable, energetic Erich with the man who was in despair enough to take his own life. It becomes even more sad and poignant when his ex-Dundee teammate Ian Redford struggles to understand it; when Ian himself would take his own life in 2014.

I have titled this piece Erich Schaedler Remembered but I feel too inadequate to do justice to the title therefore I am asking, mainly the Hibs fans out there to take a moment and write a short piece be it a sentence, a paragraph or whatever on Erich and their memories and let us all remember him.

David Stuart

I promised to post this photo the other day. It was in the 100 Years of Scottish Football Association book and shows the team before the game with Brazil on 5th July 1972. This was part of the Brazilian Independence Tournament in 1972.

Tommy Docherty was in charge at the time and he fielded a team with a couple of experienced legends in Billy Bremner and Denis Law, admittedly Denis looks knackered and there hasn’t even been a ball kicked in the photo. It must have been fairly humid in the Maracana that night in front of a measly crowd of 80,000. I am able to say measly as quite a few of them had played in front of a crowd of 119,325 at Hampden the month before in a one nil defeat to England. Bobby Clark also had some experience under his belt.

The Full line up is Martin Buchan (Manchester United), Eddie Colquhoun (Sheffield United), George Graham (Arsenal), Bobby Clark (Aberdeen), Willie Donnachie (Manchester City), Billy Bremner (Leeds United),

Front row; Asa Hartford (West Brom), Lou Macari (Celtic), Denis Law (Manchester United), Willie Morgan (Manchester United) and Alex Forsyth (Partick Thistle).

Scotland would lose the game 1-0 with Jairzinho scoring the only goal. The Scots had been given a lot of credit for their performance in the tournament with draws against Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in previous games and although Tommy Docherty seemed to be building a good solid team when Manchester United came calling Tommy headed south to Old Trafford. Remarkably in his time at Man. Utd., he would sign Graham, Macari and Forsyth from this team making it six altogether. However, Law and Morgan would leave Old Trafford under acrimonious circumstances and justly had reasons to dislike Docherty for many years after.

Most of the team would gain a lot more Scotland caps but of the lesser known players, Alex Forsyth would gain ten caps overall which included four with Partick Thistle. Eddie Colquhoun won 9 caps altogether and was a mainstay centre half in the Sheffield United team for years. Both he and Bobby Clark would play their last Scotland game in that crushing 5-0 defeat to England in 1973, which was Willie Ormond’s first game in charge.

David Stuart

I’ll keep it short and sweet. I liked him.I considered him to be a great football man who also happened to be an English patriot. I also much preferred his punditry to that of the likes of Alan Hansen or Gordon Strachan.

In Issue 3 of Scotland Epistles [August 2015] an article by Alan Nelson entitled ‘The Auld Enemy’ questions our often petty attitude towards our next door neighbours and our denigration of James William Thomas Hill which I think hits the nail on the head so to speak and so here’s a short extract –
”I find it frankly bizarre that durin his lifetime and even still so many years since he was last seen or heard on the telly, Jimmy Hill is still havin his sexuality called into question. He’s continuously lambasted for supportin his country with the same passion that we are famous for and celebratin them winnin the ultimate international prize. He even has the cheek to wear a bow tie with wee St George’s crosses on it, and meanwhile the guy lambastin him is wearin a Scotland top, kilt, pipe major’s jaiket, Glengarry hat and spoutin on about how we were ‘Unofficial’ world champions for the day because we beat England 3-2 at Wembley a year after they had become ‘Official’ world champions – and would be for a period of four years (the daft lambaster). I think Jimmy Hill’s okay.”

17th December. On this day in 1919 Henry Miller Morris was born. Henry Morris has one of those unique Scotland careers, that is somewhat obscure but well worth remembering. I know sometimes if I mention any game before 1960 a lot of people just switch off and it gets one like and most likely from my wife and sadly sometimes if she’s missed it out, I log in for her and like it for her.

Anyway Henry Morris was a centre forward for the mighty East Fife in the forties and into the fifties. This was a golden age for East Fife as they spent ten seasons in the top flight and recorded three League Cup Victories and were Scottish Cup runners up too. Henry had scored sixty goals in their League winning season of 1947-48 and was given the chance to show what he could do for Scotland on October 1st, 1948 in Scotland’s first ever World Cup Qualifier against Ireland which doubled up as a Home International match at Windsor Park, Belfast.

It took Henry two minutes to make his mark and score Scotland’s first ever World Cup goal. This was quickly followed by another four by half time including a Willie Waddell of Rangers double and one each from Billy Steel of Derby County and Hibs legend Lawrie Reilly. Although the Irish hit back with a double quite quickly in the second half, Henry scored a second with 70 minutes on the clock. Ten minutes later and Jimmy Mason, the last Third Lanark player ever to be capped added another to make it seven. Morris rounded off the scoring in the 89th minute to his hat-trick and the game finished 8-2.

Henry is only one of 29 players ever to score a hat-trick for Scotland but remarkably his feat at Windsor Park was also achieved by Hughie Gallacher, Alex Scott and Denis Law. Sadly for Henry this would be his one and only appearance for Scotland and as for Scotland’s World Cup hopes; we did qualify but the SFA in a fit of hubris had declared they would only go as British Champions, sadly a one nil defeat to England at Hampden in April 1950 meant we would stay at home.

Henry is not the only East Fife player to shine for Scotland.

Late April 1950, shortly after the England defeat Allan Brown of East Fife was given a place against Switzerland in a friendly at Hampden in front of a staggering crowd of 123,751. The Scots won 3-1 with all the goals coming in the first half; Willie Bauld opened the scoring before the Swiss equalised. Bobby Campbell of Chelsea then put the Scots 2-1 up before Allan Brown scored the third.

A month later and a friendly in Portugal and Allan nets alongside Bauld once more in two all draw in Lisbon. This was followed by a single goal victory against France in the Stade Olympique du Colombes, Paris with Allan being the only scorer that day.

Allan would then move to Blackpool but would play a total of 14 games for Scotland scoring 6 goals. He also played in Scotland’s two games at the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland.

However, before that in 1953, coincidentally in another World Cup Qualifier at Windsor Charlie Fleming of the Fifers was given his debut game. Once more Scotland won, this time 3-1 with two goals from Fleming and a third by Jackie Henderson of Portsmouth. Once more, Fleming like Morris was never picked again. Although Scotland didn’t win the Home International tournament that season they did go to the World Cup in 1954.

As to East Fife as their golden age ended so did their dalliance with the national team. Overall 6 East Fife players have represented Scotland in 16 matches achieving 9 goals which many a striker would be proud of today.

As to why Morris and Fleming never played again after shining in their one and only Scotland appearances only that can be answered by the SFA Selection committee of the time and vagaries of that lot are best left consigned to history as we will never truly know as it’s hard to fathom sometimes the SFA mind-set in the 21st Century never mind back then.

(The photo shows Henry Morris flanked by Scotland Captain George Young of Rangers and Billy Steel of Derby County.)

David Stuart

100 Years of the Scottish Football Association. I picked this up on Great Western Road today, it’s a bit unwieldy as it’s 18 inches in length. I know many of you might like a good length but when it’s peeing it doun, you don’t want it exposed to the extremities of the Glasgow weather. Anyway, I had to buy a bin bag to get it home but with the price of a bag it was only £1.05 in total and well worth it. Given it’s over 42 years old, it’s actually in quite good nick.

As I said it’s a bit unwieldy but actually once you are able to set it out to read it’s quite interesting as it takes you from 1873 all the way to 1973. It does have bits and pieces on the National team including some graphs of our successful times and failures, of course if it included today’s team we might well have fell off the graph and into uncharted territory . . . or did Berti take us there already.

There’s also stuff on some of the good club teams over the years including pictures of the East Fife Scottish Cup winning team of 1938, when everyone was worse than East Fife in that tournament as well as cup winning sides of Airdrie, Partick Thistle and others. All the great and good of Scottish football are mentioned with pieces on the Wembley wizards, the death of Celtic and Scotland goalkeeper John Thomson, R.S. McColl, Bill Struth and others.

There’s also a montage drawing of Scotland managers, which reminds of the ones in the Epistles #3 magazine  as well as a photo of the team before the game with Brazil in 1972 in the Independence Cup thingamajig, which you don’t often see. I will scan that in the next few days and write a separate piece on it.

Now all I need is a place to store the damn book without ruining it further

David Stuart

On Saturday, while everybody else was doing there Christmas shopping all around me I was perusing the magazine racks of W H Smith looking for that Scotland article in the latest magazines and of course not really finding it. Backpass magazine had an article on Great Goalkeepers of the 60’s and 70’s with Gordon Banks perhaps deservedly being Numero Uno and Ronnie Simpson was in there too but where oh where was big Roughie? So naturally I gave that one a wide berth.

Then there was a big thick one called the Golden Era which seemed to focus on the 30’s through to the late 60’s but again it was blink and you’ve missed it in terms of Scottish and Scotland stuff.

So what else was there? Well, there was the usual guff, magazines on Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool which was bad enough but then there was a How England Qualified for the Euros mag. Come on, it’s bad enough we have to put up with draw coverage and it will be an agonising summer too but do I need to see a mag on how England progressed? Of course, it could have been worse; next to it could have been the Wales, Northern Ireland and ROI companion mags and the How Scotland F**cked Once Again (Part IX) one.

So there I was with my cash burning a hole in my pocket and nowt to spend it on and as I approached the counter I spied a Scotland International Legends 2016 Calendar for £6.99 hanging sitting on a shelf. Without pausing to look at it I asked for a copy and gave the man my coins and sprinted out the shop to take in the glory of the calendar.

However, as they say it’s good but not that good. Call me pernickety but I think I would have preferred some of the shots to be in glorious colour and even Jim Baxter with a ball at his feet rather than sitting on a chair. Overall, though it’s worth the money and perhaps a good stocking filler for a Scotland fan. There is also a current Scotland team one available as well which is all colourful.

Of course, the ultimate stocking filler is Scotland Epistles, Bullshit & Thistles issues 1-3 selling on eBay and elsewhere if you look at the post published on 6th December.

If only though WH Smith had taken the Epistles on board to sell we’d all have something Scottish to read among all this English dross.

David Stuart

Happy Birthday Eoin Jess. Eoin will be 45 on December 13th. It would be fair to say that his Scotland career never really got off the ground, never reaching the heights he was expected to. By the time of his full Scotland debut in November 1992, he had made 15 Under 21 appearances. The qualifying for USA 1994 had already begun in a strong group. We had already lost 3-1 to Switzerland in Berne, drawn 0-0 with Portugal at Hampden before Jess was called up for the home game against Italy. Malta and Estonia were the minnows in the group.

Only 33,029 turned up to see Scotland play Italy at Ibrox and typically with Italian involvement the game ended nil nil, Eoin had come on for Gordon Durie in the 71st minute. Jess would start our next game against Malta at Ibrox, which for some reason the Scottish public decided to turn out in higher numbers with 35,490 turning up. Scotland coasted to a three nil win with two goals from Ally McCoist and one from Pat Nevin. Due to a leg break Jess missed Scotland’s next few games which included a five nil humping in Portugal, he would return against Switzerland in September 1993 at Pittodrie, although this would only be as a sub to fellow Dons player Scott Booth. The final score was one all with John Collins providing the Scotland goal. He would start the next game in Rome against Italy which saw Scotland defeated three – one.

March, 1994 saw Jess come on for Pat Nevin for just over twenty minutes against Netherlands at Hampden with the Scot losing one nil. A month later and roles were reversed as Jess started against Austria in Vienna in a friendly which Scotland won 2-1 with goals from John McGinlay and Billy McKinlay. Nevin would replace Eoin with six minutes remaining. It was well seen that neither Scotland nor Holland reached the ’94 World Cup as we played them again in late May ’94. Jess was given the second half in Utrecht but the Scots lost three one with fellow Dons players among the goals. Duncan Shearer for Scotland and sadly Brian Irvine for the Dutch.

Jess made another substitute appearance in opening game of Scotland’s successful Euro campaign towards England ’96, this was against Finland in September ’94 in Helsinki, a game we won 2 nil with Duncan Shearer and John Collins scoring.

Another substitute appearance a year later in a 2-0 friendly defeat in Sweden was next. Jess would open the scoring at Hampden in a game against the mighty San Marino in November ‘95, which saw Scotland score five goals to no reply. Scott Booth, Ally McCoist, Pat Nevin and a Francini own goal completed the rout.

Again the pattern of missing games continued with Jess coming back in for a game against the USA and then a substitute appearance versus Colombia in Scotland’s warm up US tour prior to the Euro’s ’96 in late May. These were his first two games as a Coventry City player. Scotland lost both these warm up games, 2-1 and 1-0 respectively.

Eoin only played 6 minutes in the tournament, coming on for Gordon Durie at Wembley as Scotland were 2 nil down to England.

By the time of cap 14, Jess had returned to Aberdeen in resurgent form and appeared as a substitute in a 1998 World Cup warm up against Denmark which saw Scotland get beat one nil at Ibrox. The World Cup would come and go before Jess returned to the Scotland line up in 2-1 defeat to the Czech Republic at Celtic Park. Jess would score Scotland’s goal in a game which is probably remembered more for the booing of Gary McAllister.

Benched again for the following fixture, a surprising one nil victory of Germany in April 1999 with Don Hutchison scoring the only goal. His final two caps also saw him as a sub again in a despairing one all draw with the Faroes, when he came on in the 89th minute and saw Scotland lose a goal in the 90th.

His final appearance was in the Czech Republic, coming on, in the 70th minute for Iain Durrant as Scotland were two one up, with goals from Paul Ritchie and Allan Johnston putting us in the lead. Unfortunately, for Jess and Scotland we lost a further two goals to see us go down 3-2.

So there you go, all that potential that never saw fruition but in fairness to Eoin he was never really given a run in the team with only 6 starts in 18 games and none of them consecutively.

Happy Birthday Eoin and all the best.

David Stuart

I was adding some team photos to the Scotland Epistles website and I remembered this one which was used on a Thistle website recently and added this too as it’s quite an interesting photo. It shows the Under 21’s team from an Irish triangular tournament in May 1998. Of course around this time most of us were thinking of the World Cup which was only a month away and that mouth-watering opener against Brazil.

This is the line up for a game on May 19th that year. I’m sure if you look closely you will recognise quite a few faces although only a few ever made it to the full squad. The line-up is as follows; Back row – Lee McCulloch (Motherwell), Gavin Strachan (WGS’s boy) (Coventry City), Russell Anderson (Aberdeen), Alan Archibald (Partick Thistle), Jim Lauchlan (Kilmarnock), Neil Alexander (Stenhousemuir). Front row – Craig Dargo (Raith Rovers), Craig McEwan (Raith Rovers), Craig Easton (Dundee United), Barry Ferguson (Rangers) and Stuart Campbell (Leicester City).

Barry Ferguson would be the first of the team to make it into the full Scotland team at the age of 20 making his debut four months later in the first fixture after the World Cup, coming on as a sub in a Euro Qualifier against Lithuania in Vilnius, a game that ended in a nil nil draw. Barry would go on to win 45 caps in total.

Russell Anderson was next to make an appearance at the age of 23, coming on as a sub in a friendly v Iceland in Reykjavik in October, 2002. Scotland won 2-0 with goals from Christian Dailly and Gary Naysmith. Naysmith would make way for Russell in the 89th minute. Russell would win a total of 11 caps for Scotland. There’s no doubt that major injuries had a lot to do with him not surpassing this total.

Lee McCulloch would have to wait until he was 26 to make his first team bow in a World Cup Qualifier against Moldova in Chisinau coming on in the last four minutes for Steven Thompson. McCulloch was a Wigan player at the time and would gain 18 caps in total.

The final player to make the grade would be Neil Alexander then of Cardiff City, who would win his first cap as he neared his 28th birthday in 2006, playing against Switzerland at Hampden in another one of those home friendly defeats that seem to happen all the time in that era. Neil would replace Craig Gordon at half time. Scotland lost 3-1 with Kenny Miller hitting the lone Scots goal.

Neil would play in both games of a rather successful Kirin Cup in Japan a few months later and that would be it although he has been picked for the squad a few times since.

So there you go out of a starting eleven only four reached their potential and played for the first team although some of the others did have good club careers.

As to the score we got pumped 3-0; so maybe it’s not surprising some of them didn’t make the grade.

David Stuart

It’s the winter of 2012 and Soccerstarz are planning their next set of Scotland players to be released in the Spring of 2013. What’s Soccerstarz David? It’s those wee toy statue thingamabobs of famous football players and the like.

Anyway back to 2012 and the team at Creative Toys Inc. who produce these is deciding which players to put in their Scotland set. These can always be fraught with difficulties never knowing who is going to become a star and who is going to fade away. Mind you, I’m sure it would have been harder in the Berti Vogts era. For every James McFadden or Darren Fletcher there was a Kevin Kyle and Brian Kerr.

So who did the wise men of Creative Toys choose? Well, they got some right with established stars like Scott Brown, although I’m not sure what the lip gloss on Scott is all about and is it just me that thinks it or did they really use an old Henrik Larsson mould for his face? Others in the set are both Fletchers; Darren and Steven, James Morrison among others. However, there’s also Kenny Miller and Gary Caldwell who have of course both retired.

Of the ones they got wrong, well, there is Craig Mackail-Smith, who looks like a rough Billy Dodds and is also telling us about the size of the fish he just caught, Lee Wallace (although, maybe that was done for commercial reasons) and Matt Philips. Although I suppose there’s always a chance for Matt if he gets a Premiership move from QPR.

There’s also Jamie Forrest, which must have saved them on plastic given he’s a foot smaller than everyone else. There’s also Leigh Griffiths with some hair but perhaps they should have made that one able to sit down, such is Strachan’s belief he’s only good enough as a benchwarmer.

If anyone out there is thinking of buying the set for their husband I have to offer a word of caution. Robert Marshall’s wife bought him the set last year but given Robert’s predilection to use them like War gamers and play full matches with them, she had to buy an opposition too. Sadly, Robert was on the phone to me last week crying “David, I’ve played with them twenty times and Scotland still can’t win.”

“So who are they playing?” I asked.

“Belgium”

“Nae feckin’ wonder you cannae win.”

(Toys pictured are; Scott Brown, Craig Mackail-what’shisname and Leigh Griffiths).

David Stuart