This came out in August 2014, which seems like a life time ago. This is a bumper packed 48 page gem which we printed thousands of hoping to sell by the bucketload. We did sell a respectable amount but are still trying to recover costs from it yet.
There are some great stories in it and it was reviewed in porgramme monthly.
We all love retro and nostalgia, in football they can be infinitely more uplifting than the present. No matter what the travails of the past were there’s normally lots to smile and reminisce about. Even glorious, or inglorious, defeats can seem preferable to current situations. For Scotland supporters there’s nothing like the past – and this new magazine makes the most of it.
SEBT is best described as a fanzine (though it says it probably isn’t) . Even that is nostalgic. A print publication, totally off-line, and with the recurring themes of epic away trips, drinking (it is Scottish) , defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, the failure of the powers that be, drinking, incredibly inept players, and the odd glorious success. It’s devoted to the Scotland national team , and even an Englishman can begin to empathise a little after reading it. Ok, we English have had our hopes dashed in big tournaments but at least we qualified. No finals for Scotland since 1998. That’s eight unsuccessful qualifying campaigns.
It’s not meant to be analytical nor to set out the path for progress. It’s a “collection of memories, thoughts, and opinions”, and is just that . For collectors there’s a piece on the merits of ticket stubs against programmes, and one on cards from the 60s and 70s (featuring Scottish internationals of course). And “Tit for Tat” is for the supporter who doesn’t have a theme but just accumulates “stuff” related to his/her team – in this case a 1974 Roary Superscot tea towel to Tennent’s Lager beermats to postcards from St Vincent &The Grenadines featuring shots from Scotland matches…
There’s a look at World Cup songs (and how at least Scots haven’t had to listen to any since 1998) and the clothes that Scotland supporters wear, plus many cross continent travel stories in search of Scottish glory.
It’s amusing, it’s opinionated , it is , as it says, “a bunch of Scotland supporters sounding off and feeling all the better for it”. SEBT hopes to publish again in March 2015 , if it doesn’t then this first issue may well be a collectible itself. Peter Berry
Here we are in the middle of a double header with the Polish misery behind us and the Gibraltar non-entity in front. Over the years around this time we’ve had some success but quite often it ends up in failure as you will see.
Five years ago. October 8th and 12th 2010
Avril Lavinge or Craigie boy as he is known to friends was in charge at this point. The first game was that infamous great tactical gem of going with a 4-6-0. Was it Rubin Kazan v Barcelona where Levein saw it and thought that was the way to go? Big difference Craig, was it was the Czech Republic and not Barcelona; I found it quite insulting at the time that he didn’t think we were good enough to get an away goal against a poor Czech team. One nil; no Plan B; Goodnight Prague.
Then came the game against the World Champions at Hampden a few days later and we almost got a result getting beat 3-2 against Spain . . . sounds all too familiar.
Ten years ago. October 8th and 12th . . . again 2005
Hans Hubert Vogts had started off in charge of our World Cup 2006 campaign in which we were generally very very poor drawing to Slovenia at home and losing to Norway at home too. Still worse was to come on October 8th, with a 1-0 defeat at home to Belarus, their goal had come in five minutes after which came 85 mind numbing minutes of failure to score; possibly our worst game under Watty Smith.
Next up Slovenia away and surely defeat but no this was one the great performances from Scotland in this century as we won 3-0 in Celje. The goals from Darren Fletcher, James McFadden and Paul Hartley were all peaches, if only we played with that freedom and skill all the time. IIRC this victory gained us the highest ranking points for any team for one game that year in the World Rankings. It also allowed us to gain a poor 3rd place rather than a very poor fourth.
Fifteen Years. October 7th and 11th October 2000
Wee Craig Brown was in charge back then. This is one of the qualifying rounds that we actually did quite well and started with a good away win in Latvia thanks to a Neil McCann goal. October 7th and we struggled to beat San Marino but eventually we got the goals from Matt Elliott and Don Hutchison to see us through. 4 days later and a good 1-1 draw with Croatia in Zagreb with Kevin Gallacher netting saw us make a solid start to the group. Unfortunately losing a lead to Belgium in March 2001 and allowing them to claw back from 2-0 down was part of our downfall. Sad to think that two draws with the group winners Croatia and only one defeat to Belgium was not enough to even gain second place.
Twenty Years. October 11th. 1995
We had already qualified under Craig Brown for Euro ’96 coming in runners up to Russia in Group 8 and a friendly was being played this night in Stockholm. We lost two nil in a game that had fives subs come on so it was not taken that seriously
Twenty Five. October 17th. 1990
Whoo-hoo another tournament we would qualify for, this time with Andy Roxburgh in charge, Euros 1992. Having already beat Romania for our first game in the qualifying on this night we put paid to Switzerland; a team we haven’t always managed to get past. A penalty by John Robertson of Hearts in only his second International and a goal by Gary McAllister in his fifth game saw us win 2-1.
Going back further October 16th, 1985 was Alex Ferguson’s first game in charge after the untimely death of Jock Stein. Scotland drew 0-0 in a friendly against East Germany. We would fail to score in five games out of the ten that Fergie was in charge, which would ultimately see us fail in Mexico ’86.
October 15th, 1980 saw us draw 0-0 with Portugal in a World Cup Qualifier at Hampden but we would still make it through to Spain ’82 under Jock Stein.
October 29th, 1975, goals from Dalglish, Bruce Rioch and Norwich City’s Ted McDougall would see us beat Denmark 3-1 but a 2-1 home defeat to Spain the year before meant the damage had already been done in this tournament under Willie Ormond.
1970 and there was fewer games played back then and the nearest is in November 17th, that year which saw us beat Denmark 1-0 at Hampden under Bobby Brown with a goal from Derby County’s John O’Hare.
If you think Thursday was miserable this one was too.
Scotland faced Poland at Hampden in a qualifying game for the 1966 World Cup on October 13th. A team full of stars including Billy McNeill, John Greig, Billy Bremner, Denis Law and Alan Gilzean went one up in the 14th minute through Billy McNeill but Poland would score not one but two goals in the last six minutes to win the game. After that, we were chasing our tails but did beat Italy one nil the following month with a goal in the 88th minute. However, with Italy beating us 3-0 in Naples a month later it was them that headed towards World Cup ’66. Of course had they known that defeat to North Korea and the ignominy that awaited them back home in Italy that followed; perhaps they might have thrown the game against us.
The dream has died, but the nightmare goes on and on and on,,,,, I really thought we would qualify this time round but it all went ‘Pete Tong’. I blame Hamish Husband – was he not meant to be marking Lewandowski? Fair play to the Republic of Ireland though – they took four points off the World Champions – and I wish them all the best.
All I want to say about the Poland game is that I hugged David Stuart enthusiastically – twice – in the 45th and 62nd minutes – but ultimately it was all for nothing. Poland’s killer equaliser came deep into Richard Goughski time and as sore ones go it was like getting the anal probe with a cheese grater. See photos for flares and false scorelines.
I’m not as well traveled as many fellow Scotland supporters so the game against Gibraltar in Faro will be my first ever, totally meaningless, away tie. Sunshine and sipping beers by the swimming pool are no substitute for a chance to make the play-offs. However as the Martin Luther King Tartan Army are wont to sing – ‘We shall overcome. We shall overcome….’
Hopefully WGS will not have the brassneck to be a pontificating pundit during the Euro Finals next summer and that he’s hiding from our British and Irish neighbours like the rest of us until the World Cup qualifiers begin. Meanwhile for us masochistic collectors, we can look forward to the pain of completing an associated Panini stickers album that includes England, Wales, Northern Ireland and maybe the Republic of Ireland, but no us! Will I ever get a Scott Brown shiny?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m away into a darkened room to drink McEwan’s Export and to listen to my Carpenters CD. Make the pain go away, Karen……
Can you imagine the naivety of two guys meeting in a pub and thinking “Hey WGS is taking us all the way to France, let’s ride that crest of a wave and launch a Scotland fanzine”? What were we thinking? It was a near thing though wasn’t it; we nearly sold enough copies to keep us going. We had some good performances along the way. I mean look at those covers each one was better than the one before and we had issue four’s cover all planned out. It was going to be a caricature of Wee Gordon holding the Henri Delaunay Trophy aloft with even tinier Shaun Maloney and Ikechi Anya hanging on to it.
Well bang goes that plan.So is this the end of the Scotland Epistles, Bullshit & Thistles? Is it whit! It’s time to kick on and move onwards and upwards; we will be bringing out an issue four in Spring 2016, even though Robert will need to remortgage his house to pay for it.
Things have been a wee quiet on the Facebook front as I have been working on a website. It’s still in its infancy and probably needs some tweaking here and there. The Facebook page has been great and we will continue to post stuff as often as before but with the website we hope to do other things such as galleries of Scotland football cards, stickers, posters, programmes or whatever.
I have also managed to put just about every Facebook posting on the site, which makes it easier to find old posts and photos as you can make searches for articles on players, managers, teams etc and find them all.
We will also be on the lookout for contributors, so feel free to contact and help us out via the website. As always please let others know about the Epistles; whether on Facebook, Website or indeed the actual magazine. Thanks to everyone who has shared a post or commented or liked us; it all helps.
Robert and I decided tonight that in future we won’t try to sell the fanzine at the game as it takes a lot out of our enjoyment of what should be a great occasion as we worry and fret over sales and don’t get to go to the pub beforehand.
So please if you haven’t already buy a copy and help us out. We love doing this but sometimes it can be difficult to sustain particularly on a night like tonight when victory has been snatched away from us with the very last kick of the ball.
Fresh on from their successful 1970 World Cup coins set, the guys from Esso came up with these crappy things; Squelchers. They were tiny booklets and each of the 16 covered differing topics from the World Cup Story to the Language of Football (?) to one for each of the Home International teams. This is of course is the Scotland one with Billy Bremner leading out the team at Wembley followed by goalkeeper Jim Herriot and you can also see the Colin Stein, Billy McNeill and John Greig in the background and I suspect it’s Tommy Gemmell hidden behind Herriot. Unfortunately, it’s 1969 and the Scots got pumped 4-1 that day.
Inside the Squelcher there are some photos of Scotland players in their club colours including Alan Gilzean, Denis Law, Charlie Cooke, Bobby Murdoch and others. There is also some dialogue with a brief history of Scottish football and some of the players and teams of the past and present but it also gives you such sentences as “Any Scotsman would give his best sporran for the chance to play against England in an International”.
There are two photos from the Scotland v England in May 1970, which ended in a nil nil draw. However, one of the photos credits John Greig when it’s Ronnie McKinnon. The other is of Jimmy Johnstone.
They are still pretty cheap to buy on Ebay but handle them gently as mine has just fallen apart when scanning it.
Having had Tommy photobomb in a couple of recent articles I thought it was time I did an article on him. Tommy was quite in unusual that all his caps came when he was a Kilmarnock player and not when he played for Rangers. In total, Tommy gained six caps and when you consider the calibre of player in his position at the time, he did well to earn them. As Bobby Brown had Charlie Cooke, Jimmy Johnstone, Willie Morgan and even Tony Green of Blackpool among others to choose from.
His first cap came in October, 1968 when Scotland beat Denmark one nil in a friendly in Copenhagen. Also making their debut that night was Colin Stein, who Tommy would play alongside for Rangers and Jim Herriot of Birmingham City. Bobby Lennox scored the only goal that night. Although, McLean, Herriot and Stein were all dropped for the next game; a vital World Cup Qualifier against Austria that Scotland won 2-1 they were reinstated to face Cyprus in December ’68 in Nicosia. Scotland won 5-0 nil with Stein and Alan Gilzean scoring two each and Bobby Murdoch hitting the other. Stein would hit 6 of his 10 Scotland goals against Cyprus.
I have tried to locate on the net, some photos from this game as I have a vague memory of seeing some at the time which showed the pitch to be mainly sand and with those crazy striped black and white goalposts. Any photos anyone?
Again all three were dropped for the next World Cup game against West Germany at Hampden in April ’69, but once more they were put back into the team for the first of that year’s Home Internationals against Wales at the Racecourse, Wrexham in May. This game was covered in the article ‘The M men March On’ a few weeks back in which we first saw Tommy in the background. Scotland won 5-3 with goals from McLean, Stein, Billy McNeill, Alan Gilzean and Billy Bremner. Jim Herriot only played in the second 45 when goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence of Liverpool was injured.
Although, Herriot and Stein would retain their places in the Scotland team over the next few games, Tommy would not return until a Home International game against Northern Ireland in April 1970. Making their debut that day would be Davie Hay, clubmate Billy Dickson, Willie Carr of Coventry and John O’Hare of Derby.
The only goal of the game came from a pinpoint, deep cross from McLean to O’Hare who headed past Pat Jennings to give Scotland victory. Tommy would keep his place for the Wales game at Hampden a few days later which ended in a nil nil draw. However, Tommy was to be dropped in favour of Jimmy Johnstone in the final game of the Home Internationals that year against England which would also end up 0-0.
Tommy’s final game would see him return to where it all began, as Scotland played the third game of their Euro Qualifiers in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, Finn Laudrup (Brian and Michael’s father; no, not them that sang ‘Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs’ in the 70’s but the football players) would score the only goal of the game that more or less saw the end to Scotland’s Euro chances and indeed Bobby Brown’s management of Scotland. Interestingly Tom Forsyth, also a future teammate made his debut that night as a Motherwell player.
It’s a silly game anyway……although if we win our last pool match against Samoa on Saturday we are through to the quarter finals of a World Cup – which is something that the host nation cannot now achieve. You have to feel for our friends and neighbours south of the border though don’t you….well don’t you? I always think it a shame when the host nation goes out at the group stages of a FIFA World Cup or UEFA European Championships – it’s like getting put to your bed early at your own party.
Anyway, this Rugby World Cup is a bit of an expensive malarkey -serves me right I hear you say. My ticket for the Leazes corner end at Newcastle’s St.James’ Park for the game against South Africa cost £85. That’s more than the combined amount I paid this year to see The Stranglers AND Sydney Devine – perhaps the SFA were the pricing consultants. Add to that, the match programme was a tenner and it was £4.50 for a pint of bitter in the stadium – which is a pretty impressive, if somewhat lopsided stadium.
I tried to imagine what the place looked like when former Scotland internationalists Hughie Gallacher [1920s] and Bobby Moncur [1960s/1970s] strutted their stuff at St.James’ Park – vast, open terraces, muddy pitches and cheap beer – before Roy Aitken and Steven Caldwell helped usher in the modern era.
Back to the present and Scotland Epistles’ ‘Unlikely Lads’ [David Stuart and myself] will be at Hampden on Thursday flogging fanzines before cheering on Scotland to victory over Poland – hopefully.
Scotland’s egg-chasers will have to beat Samoa this coming Saturday without my assistance however as I’ll be flying out to Faro for the Gibraltar game. Let’s hope it’s still a meaningful fixture – there’s nothing worse than a dead rubber -as England v Uruquay at the rugby world cup will testify. Fnarr! Fnarr!
If Jimmy Johnstone had lived 30th September would have been his 71st birthday. To celebrate here is a cracking photo of him and that other ginger giant of the time, Billy Bremner. I’m not sure if Jinky has given the two fingers to the press by this time or not, after his mesmerising display against England in May 1974, a few days after the legendary boat escapade. Scotland have just won 2-0 with goals from Joe Jordan and a Colin Todd own goal. If you look at the video Jordan’s goal is really another own goal scored by Mike Pejic but the record books record it as a goal for Joe. So that’s how it is.
Jimmy is wearing Peter Shilton’s top which is about ten sizes too big for him. Also pictured is Kenny Dalglish, Danny McGrain, Peter Lorimer (I think) and Joe Jordan.
So here’s to Jinky and indeed to Billy too! Will we ever see their likes again?
The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine 