The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine

On 25 May it will be the 30th anniversary of Scotland winning the first-ever Rous Cup courtesy of a 1-0 victory over England at Hampden in front of 66,489. Richard Gough – then of Dundee United – got us the winner in the 68th minute and the England team included the likes of Peter Shilton, Terry Butcher,Glenn Hoddle, Bryan Robson, John Barnes, Trevor Francis and Gary Lineker.

The Rous Cup was an end of season tournament – a supposed replacement for the British Championship – that was named after the former FIFA President Sir Stanley Rous and which ran from 1985 to 1989 inclusive. In 1985 and 1986 the Rous Cup comprised of one-off matches between the ‘Auld Enemies’ whilst from 1987 to 1989 it consisted of a triangular tournament involving Brazil, Colombia and Chile respectively. The final arithmetic shows that there were eleven Rous Cup matches in total- six at Hampden and five at Wembley and that both Scotland and England played in eight matches each. Roy Aitken and Alex McLeish plus England’s Chris Waddle all have eight Rous Cup appearances to their names.

I got hold of a cracking wee book today in a Charity Shop from 1982 called ‘The Football Industry – The Early Years of the Professional Game’ by John Hutchison. It’s not a detail of early games and cup winners etc. it’s more a look at differing aspects of the early game from the business i.e. adverts for Football boots, Turnstile makers to pavilion makers, then bits on players, supporters. It really is quite interesting although the book is about British football in general, it is written and published in Scotland and has a high Scottish content including a lot on Hearts for some reason. Here’s a quick whistle tour of the book

There’s a photo of Isaac Begbie of Hearts (I kid you not Begbie!) who played 4 games for Scotland from 1890-94 and he is proudly showing off his trophies mostly for five a side games for some reason. There’s also a cartoon report on the 1900 game between Scotland and England which the Scots won 4-1 with R S McColl hitting a hat-trick.

Adverts for train travel by three different rail companies from Scotland for the England game in Blackburn in 1887, which we won 3-2. There’s also a photo of the Crystal Palace ground in 1905 for the game against England which sadly we lost one nil. However, my favourite article is one from a contemporary newspaper in 1898 that starts off describing the throng of the crowd heading towards Celtic Park for the game against the Auld Enemy and then described Scotland team that lost three –one “a useless, feckless jumble of Colossal Frosts. Slow, turgid, nervous, blundering, they made an awful mess of their mission and their name”. Teams nowadays have it so easy. As I say a right cracking book and a wee bargain too as it was three books for a pound and I managed to pick up David Hay’s biography The Quiet Assassin which is quite a good read as I have it on my kindle already.

David Stuart

First posted on Facebook 22nd May, 2015

The Tommy Lawrence picture posted a few days ago came from the above magazine but there was some other Scottish interest in it and I thought I would show them too.

Inside Forward Bobby Hope of West Brom is probably not a name synonymous with the Scotland team, although he featured in a few Scottish football card sets of the late 60’s. Bobby played over 350 games for West Brom and also went on to play for Birmingham City, Philadelphia Atoms and the Dallas Tornadoes and in between a stint at Sheffield Wednesday.

Bobby must surely have one of the shortest debut games in Scotland history having started a match. In May 1968, Bobby started against Netherlands in Amsterdam but was subbed after only 12 minutes, when Jimmy Smith, then of Aberdeen, playing his first game came on. The game finished nil nil. However, unlike Celtic’s John Kennedy who suffered a similar fate in 2004, Bobby did get another game for Scotland. In October 1968, Bobby lined up against Denmark in Copenhagen in a match that saw debuts given to Jim Herriot, Tommy McLean and Colin Stein. Bobby Lennox scored the only goal of the night and that was the end of Bobby’s international career.

A few pages on and it’s a young Bruce Rioch in his Aston Villa playing days that is featured. Remarkably Bruce had been signed from Luton for £100,000 and had been bought by future Scotland manager Tommy Docherty during his ill-fated tenure at Villa Park. In fact most of Tommy’s managerial appointments could be described as ill-fated except perhaps his management of Scotland. Of course, Bruce wasn’t capped until he was playing at Derby County and it was Willie Ormond who picked him.

On to the back page and it’s Ian Ure during his time with Arsenal, similar to Peter Marinello and Charlie Nicholas, Ure’s time at Arsenal never reached the heights it was hoped to. His time at Arsenal is mainly remembered for some high profile mistakes. Ian earned 11 caps for Scotland and eight of them came when he was with Dundee, the team he had won the Scottish First Division with and also reached the Semi-Finals of the European Cup.
There is also a short article on Willie Wallace inside, saying that he no longer wishes to be chosen to play for Scotland as he felt there “ is no point in being a Scottish reserve, with no chance of playing”.

A quarter of a century ago Scotland were preparing to go to Italia 90 – our fifth world cup finals in a row! As part of our preparations we arranged a game at Pittodrie [on 16 May] against fellow world cup finalists Egypt who as it so happened would be in England’s group in Sardinia/Sicily. Egypt also took part in the 1934 World Cup Finals in Italy because back then, unlike us numpties, they thought a global tournament might be a good idea. D’oh!

I remember wearing an Arab head-dress to the game partly because someone had told me that Aberdeen in May can be a bit Sub-Saharan.I was misinformed -Lawrence of Maryhill?-what a tosser… Alas I wasn’t the only eejit there that evening as a nervy, error-strewn performance by Scotland helped Egypt to a 3-1 victory. Former Aberdeen player Bryan Gunn made his debut in goals, Alex McLeish was captain, Ally McCoist netted for Scotland and Craig Levein didn’t come on until the 89th minute so we can’t really blame the future/former Scotland manager for that one. Pity.

By the looks of it, Pat Crerand and if you’ve read his book ‘Never Turn The Other Cheek’ it will be no surprise, as he was very much a role model for Roy Keane, in his unwillingness to suffer fools readily and to hit first and ask questions later.
These pictures are from a game against Uruguay at Hampden in May 1962 and it looks as though Pat is trying to get at the injured player. Looking on in the first picture are Jim Baxter and Eric Caldow. The brave man in the second photo, holding back Pat this time is Davie Wilson.
Given it was a friendly, the ref may have felt a little bit lenient as this didn’t lead to a sending off, although Pat had been sent off previously for Scotland in Bratislava against Czechoslovakia 35 minutes into a World Cup Qualifier, which we lost 4 – 0. To be fair though to Pat we were already two down by this point.

John Hewie passed away on May 11th, 2015

John Hewie of Charlton Athletic made his Scotland debut in a one all draw with England in April 14th 1956. John generally appeared as left back with Scotland with Alex Parker of Falkirk his right sided full back partner initially, but he would also play a lot with Eric Caldow of Rangers. Graham Leggat of Aberdeen scored for Scotland in a team with three of the Hibs ‘Famous Five’; Bobby Johnstone, then of Man. City along with Lawrie Reilly and Gordon Smith as well as Bobby Evans of Celtic and George Young of Rangers. The English team included Tom Finney, Nat Lofthouse, Johnny Haynes and one of the tragic victims of the Munich Air Disaster, Duncan Edwards.

The photo is of the team for John’s third game which was against Wales on 20th October, 1956, which ended in a 2 all draw with Willie Fernie of Celtic and Lawrie Reilly of Hibs grabbing the other. I love the optical illusion of all of 5’ 3” Bobby Collins looking almost the same size of the man mountain at 6’ 2” that George Young was.
Qualification for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden began with a 4-2 win over Spain at Hampden with Jackie Mudie of Blackpool hitting a hat trick and John scoring his first goal for Scotland from the penalty spot. (His other goal would come in a 4 nil thrashing of Northern Ireland at Windsor Park, also from a penalty, in October 1959.) A 2-1 win against Switzerland in Basle in May 1957 with goals from Mudie and Bobby Collins followed. However, a 4-1 defeat with Gordon Smith of Hibs scoring, to Spain in Madrid left Scotland having to beat Switzerland to qualify, by virtue of Spain’s draw with Switzerland in the group opener.
This was achieved, on November 6th, 1957 with Alex Parker taking John’s place. The Scots stood at 3 -1 with ten minutes to go, when the Swiss made it 3-2, which must have led to a very nervy final ten minutes. The three goals came from Archie Robertson (Clyde), Mudie again and Alex Scott of Rangers for the third. Sweden here we come!
John played in two of our three games in Sweden. The first being a one all draw with Yugoslavia in Vasteras with Sammy Murray of Hearts scoring a second half equaliser. He then missed the 3-2 defeat to Paraguay with Parker again deputising. Mudie and Collins were the scorers for Scotland.
John returned for the final game against France which ended in a 2-1 defeat, Sammy Baird of Rangers scored our lone reply after two goals from French legends Raymond Kopa and World Cup record scorer Juste Fontaine. John only played a few times after this with Duncan Mackay of Celtic becoming the preferred choice of left back. His final game came in May 1960 in a 3-2 defeat at Hampden to Poland in a friendly, with Denis Law and Ian St. John bagging the goals for the Scots. In total, John won 19 caps for Scotland. As far as I can tell John is still the only Scot ever to be capped whilst playing for Charlton Athletic, although Tony Watt might have something to say about that in the near future.
So here’s to John Hewie, one of the select few players ever to grace the World Cup playing field for Scotland, may he rest in peace.
David Stuart

First posted on Facebook May 13th, 2015

Following on from some of the feedback to the posting on the 1975 Scotland-Portugal match I thought I’d redress the balance and hunt out a programme from a Scotland away game with Portugal. Turns out the only one I have dates from November 2002 [co-incidently the last time the two sides have met] when a game in the city of Braga was billed as a Euro 2004 preparation match.

Portugal won 2-0 thanks to a first-half double from Pedro Pauletta. The home side were also able to call upon the likes of Figo, Simao, Rui Costa and Nuno Gomes. For our part we had Rab Douglas in goal, Paul Lambert was captain, Stevie Crawford and Scott Dobie lead the line up front whilst Lee Wilkie picked up a booking for his troubles. Portugal lead 7-4 in the series going back to 1950 with three matches drawn.As for Euro 2004 it must have been a fabulous tournament to stage and/or participate in.[Hopefully our game against Gibraltar in Faro will be our ‘Algarve Ascension’]. I still can’t believe however that Greece won it in 2004, but win it they did which surely gives hope to the likes of us. If memory serves, the Hellas Hurricanes did it with the aid of a German manager – now why didn’t we try something like that?

I see that UEFA have just announced the ticket prices for the 2016 Euro Finals in France. As you might expect, the opening game will be an expensive one with prices ranging from £54 to £428 – if I’ve done my conversion rate properly. For all other group stage games the prices are £18, £40, £76 and £104. If you want to go to the actual final then the price range is £61 to a whopping £644.

Looking back, my tickets for the group stage matches at the Spain 1982World Cup Finals cost only 300 pesetas each – about £1.60! At Euro 96 my ticket for the Holte End at Villa Park to see Scotland v. The Netherlands cost me £35 and when I gatecrashed Euro 2000, tickets for group matches in Brugge and Amsterdam cost me 50 Euros each.My dearest ticket proved to be that for the opening match of the 1998 World Cup Finals in France. It cost me 850 French Francs [about £85] to see Brazil rob Scotland. As for next year, well when you’ve been starved for 18 years I’m not sure ticket prices matter that much especially when there are golf clubs and 1970s medallions to be pawned!

I was in W.H. Smith today looking through their football mags and I was pretty bored by what I saw, covers with the same footballers all the way through; it’s all Barca, Real, Bayern, Liverpool with Ronaldo and Messi plastered everywhere, great players but characters? Not so much, in fact there was club magazines for Chelsea and Arsenal with Man. Utd. And Liverpool (Gerrard) specials on sale. However, was there anything about Scottish teams and I don’t mean the Rangers News or Celtic View? Of course not. Am I likely to see a magazine with Naismith, Maloney or Andrew Robertson on the front? No. I’m not and the likelihood seeing Scottish players on a national magazine is a non-starter. Maybe that’s why I like the mags from the sixties and seventies so much; the Shoot, Goal, Charlie Buchan monthly, their front covers weren’t always about one or two clubs or just the top players, they did like to mix it up a bit. (Of course if you do want a magazine with lots of Scots on the front . . . whisper it, you could buy the Scotland Epistles).
Anyway talk about characters, here’s a wild one. Stirling’s finest Billy Bremner. Normally I go on to details about the player on front but Billy needs no real introduction. The front cover is from Goal magazine December 18th, 1971 and I think our Billy is pissed. The other photo was published later in the mag but I think it confirms Billy had a jar or two the night before. Would do you think?
Elsewhere, there’s a photo of Ian Ross of Liverpool, whom I believe came from ‘the Milton’ in Glasgow (where some of the best people come from). There’s also black and white photos of Jimmy Gabriel ( 2 caps in the early sixties), George Graham and an article on Peter Marinello, promising his playboy days are behind him and how he’s going to prove to be a success at Highbury. Ho Hum.
Finally, do you think Billy’s pissed?

First posted on Facebook May 11th, 2015