Look if you dare, at macabre mementos of humiliating defeats at Wembley and Cardiff, World Cup and European Championship disasters plus Jimmy Hill etc etc. A Room 101 that is full of Scottish nightmares. Enjoy…..
April 1954 English League 4 Scottish League 0
A crowd of 49,250 saw Jock Stein win his only representative honour as a player. Willie Ormond was also named in the starting line-up.
June 1954 This DVD includes footage of Scotland’s 7-0 thrashing from reigning World Champions Uruquay. Don’t watch alone…
The Scotland team again included two future managers in Tommy Docherty and Willie Ormond. It was those heavy feckin jerseys what done for us!
April 1955 England 7 Scotland 2 with Wolves’ Dennis Wilshaw netting four.
The Scotland team included two players from both Clyde and Partick Thistle and none from Celtic and Rangers. Where’s the ‘Old Firm’ when you need them?
April 1958 Scotland 0 England 4.
An incredible crowd of 127,874 saw George Herd [Clyde], James Murray [Hearts] and James Forrest [Motherwell] make their Scotland debuts although for Forrest it would also be his final representative match. It’s still one more cap than most of us have…
April 1961 England 9 Scotland 3 with Jimmy Greaves grabbing a hat-trick. On the plus side, not many visiting teams to Wembley manage to score three goals…
The Hapless Haffey
July 1966 Scotland could have prevented this – if we had qualified.
[July 2016 will mean a deluge of 50th anniversary ‘celebrations’. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]
14th February 1973 Scotland 0 England 5. A Saint Valentine’s day massacre forms part of the SFA Centenary celebrations.
March 1974 English League 5 Scottish League 0.
One theory is that we lay down to them to try and keep our good friend Sir Alf Ramsey in a job. It didn’t work and he was sacked before the British Championships in May and all because of some Polish clown…
May 1975 England 5 Scotland 1.
Scotland’s best player was Alfie Conn, junior, who won his second and final cap that fateful day.
“What’s the time?”
“Five past Kennedy” went the joke. In fairness to Stewart he had played 4 games for Scotland in a row and had yet to be in a losing side including two shut outs. May 1975 would be the last time he was seen in a Scotland shirt.
June 1978 Peru 3 Scotland 1.
In the second phase host nation Argentina had to defeat Peru by four clear goals to pip Brazil for a place in the final. Peru lost the match 6-0 and were duly castigated. Scotland may be shit but at least we’re honest.
June 1978 Scotland 1 Iran 1.
Who would have thought that a draw would have been so embarrassing? It’s quite possible that Iran are now even more ashamed.
Those World Cup Perms
As if the results weren’t bad enough let’s not forget those perms that proliferated the team the same way that beards do now.
At least this isn’t a Scotland thing to be ashamed of but these cards produced by the Sun newspaper in ’78-79 season, must surely be in here too. They are so bad I still haven’t added them to the the cards & stickers section . . . yet. I do have one more from this set but I think the Willie Miller card has lost itself in a fit of embarrassment.
June 1990 Scotland 0 Costa Rica 1.
The Central Americans also ‘shocked’ Sweden to reach the second round where they lost 4-1 to Czechoslovakia in Bari.
January 1998 An article in the now defunct magazine ‘Fitba’ reminds us that Jimmy Hill was but a super-patriot for our near neighbours.
June 1998 Scotland 0 Morocco 3.
Our most ‘recent’ match at the finals of a major tournament was a tad disappointing.
March 2002 France 5 Scotland 0
It was only a friendly match but it still hurt though – cheers, Berti.
November 2003 Netherlands 6 Scotland 0.
Scotland won the first leg of the play-off 1-0 at Hampden Park and then it all went ‘Pete Tong’ in Amsterdam. It was all to do with the luck of the draw and so fellow play-off losers Norway, Turkey, Slovenia and Wales must have wished they had drawn Scotland instead.
February 2004 Wales 4 Scotland 0.
This confidence-boosting friendly match was Scotland’s next fixture after the 6-0 gubbing in Amsterdam. Ten goals in two games – eat your heart out San Marino!
August 2009 Norway 4 Scotland 0.
Scotland missed the opportunity to consolidate second place in World Cup qualifying group 9. Darren Fletcher and Kenny Miller missed half-chances inside the opening 15 minutes and the game turned on Gary Caldwell’s 34th minute dismissal with Norway scoring from the resulting free-kick with the aid of a Scott Brown deflection. Basically, we were pish….
Can I just add Belgium here, Robert?. It just seems to me that every time we get them in a qualifying round whether it’s the World Cup or Euros we always end up humped. We have even beaten them twice in Scotland in Euro qualifying; once up at Pittodrie in 1971 and at Hampden in 1987 but as we know we never made it to Euro ’72 or ’88, so it didn’t matter. Who can forget being two nil up at Hampden after 28 minutes against ten men and dreaming of going to Japan for 2002 World Cup . . . and then the bloody Belgians equalised in the last minute or Dalglish’s double in the Heysel stadium and we still got beat. So for me Belgium has to be in here and don’t get me started on sprouts!
David Stuart
The TAMB Selections
We decided to ask people on the Tartan Army Message Board what they would like to see here and here were their selections.
Straight in was Dogbiscuit with the linesman v Italy in November 17th, 2007. This is for giving a foul against Alan Hutton in the last few minutes when clearly Hutton was the one being fouled. Italy scored from the resultant free kick to win 2-1 and with that we were stay at home people once more. Of course, some level headed people pointed out that Italy had been denied a good goal for offside and that our goal was clearly offside too and yet the decision still hurts. I think it’s just one of those things that it came in the last minutes as we were chasing the win, minutes before James McFadden missed a great chance for us and then we were brought down to earth with a thump.
It is rather sad that this video has been watched over 95,000 times; it definitely says something about the Scottish / Tartan Army Psyche that we put ourselves through this pain time and time again.
Dogbiscuit and JECK also gave us Kevin Blom. Who? Kevin Blom was the ref against the Czech Republic, who gave the penalty to the Czechs in the last few minutes, when it was clearly a dive and so farewell to dreams of Euro 2012.
Again some wise man pointed out that the Czechs had clearly been denied a penalty earlier in the game when Charlie Adam stamped on Baros. (Although to be fair I always thought Baros is the kind of player anybody would stamp on if they had the chance). Again, it came in the dying minutes and had it came in the first few minutes I don’t think we would have given it much thought . . . well, maybe some.
Two words from scottincarlisle – Chris Iwelumo. Need I say more. The look on Chris’s face says it all.
tartanmartin gave us this haiku
Craig Levein Craig Levein Craig Levein Craig Levein
4-6-0
4-6-0
4-6-0
4-6-0
Eastiebeastie put forward this;
“Fonseca v South Korea Italia 90. The goal that knocked us out in the 96th min.
Literally broke ma heart. Only a bairn at the time. Mind ITV fannies Emlyn Hughes and Rodney marsh thought it v funny.”
Once again, an extremely poor Uruguay were part of our World Cup exit but as Jacques Hunt suggested we were the masters of our own downfall.
“I suppose that we would be delighted to get this far in a WC finals these days, but I can assure you that it was excruciating at the time. Malaga 1982, 2-2 vs Soviet Union. 1-0, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2 final score and out we went again. THAT collision. My first WC finals. We had a very decent squad.”
COLT NY suggested our new pink kit. The jury is out on this one even though it just looks like a ladies t-shirt but if we get a big win in it . . . then maybe, just maybe we’ll love it.
Munro7 offered up “the granny rule”
I assume this is in regards to the rule that if at least one of your grandparents is Scottish then your entitled to play for the national team. I tend to agree it’s a step too far but I think we’re stuck with it. However, it’s not all bad news, instead of going to the Euro’s this year, perhaps we should head en masse to Brazil and get a few of the locals pregnant and reap the rewards in 40+ years time.
At least we haven’t went down that road of having naturalised Scots like the Rugby team have when a guy has lived in the country for a fortnight or so and he gets to wear the dark blue of our nation.
Of course I could be completely wrong and the granny rule is something to do with prostitutes at away games, where you have to at least pump a granny per Qualifiers.
Ally Boy 69 got into the spirit of things with a complete list, most of which doesn’t need explaining.
Dominic Matteo no explanation required….Levein for still trying to justify 4-6-0 by using barca as the example…..Teofilo Cubillas for breaking my heart as a 9 year old…..kaunus for being the most depressing place visited watching scotland…..and definitely doh a fkg deer….
Sorry Ally Boy 69 . . .
redstevie007 reminded us that Patrick Kluivert’s consolation goal against England also saw us fail to get out of the group stage at another major finals.
Geeman suggested these three
Jimmy Hill coz he’s a ****
Yuri Geller for having Bawz to suggest he tried to move Gary Mac’s PK in Euro 96.
The number 1966
Two are already in here somewhere as for Uri Geller. What a Fud! Gary McAllister missed the damn thing all by himself.
binobear gave us the Ian Black cap. It must be the first time a player was booed coming on for his Scotland debut but let’s face it he was shite and playing in the 4th tier of Scottish football but then again Craig Levein was in charge at the time.
Flora MacDonald gave us “Stevie Nicol’s shitey side-foot effort against Uruguay in ’86.”
Two minutes in:
Boynze suggested ” The Scotland men’steam 1998 to present”
So here are some of them.
Well, there’s certainly some tadgers among that lot (see Team Photos for full details of each one).
Angus_Young gave us a lot to think about:
The day they announced the season ticket prices last campaign. Don’t think I’ve seen a non-footballing moment knock the wind out of a support’s sails quite like it.
“Robert Earnshaw scoring a hat-trick against us.”
“Doh-A-Deer”
Yeah but without Doh – a – Deer we would never have had this classic Simpsons moment.
“Not being allowed to dislike Kilts.”
When they look like this, it’s easy to dislike them.
Armitage Shanks suggested “pretty much all the friendlies Berti was manager of.
Just to confirm how bad things were, here is the full list;
27th March, 2002 France 5 Scotland 0
17th April, 2002 Scotland 1 Nigeria 2
16th May, 2002 South Korea 4 Scotland 1
20th May, 2002 South Africa 2 Scotland 0
23rd May, 2002 Hong Kong League XI 0 Scotland 4 (Whoo hoo a win)
21st August, 2002 Scotland 0 Denmark 1
15th October, 2002 Scotland 3 Canada 1
20th November, 2002 Portugal 2 Scotland 0
12th February, 2003 Scotland 0 Republic of Ireland 2
30th April, 2003 Scotland 0 Austria 2
27th May, 2003 Scotland 1 New Zealand 1
20th August, 2003 Norway 0 Scotland 0
18th February, 2004 Wales 4 (incl. Robert Earnshaw hat-trick) Scotland 0
31st March, 2004 Scotland 1 Romania 2
28th April, 2004 Denmark 1 Scotland 0
27th May, 2004 Estonia 0 Scotland 1
30th May, 2004 Scotland 4 Trinidad & Tobago 1
18th August, 2004 Scotland 0 Hungary 3
3rd September, 2004 Spain 1 Scotland 1 (Match Abandoned)
P19 W4 D3 L12 F17 A34
Nuff said.
The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine 
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