I missed Scotland-Iceland because of work, and my carefully laid plans to avoid the score and watch it on Sky Plus when I got home were ruined when a loud-mouthed English nurse, doing her bit for Anglo-Scottish relations, waltzed into A&E at 9-15 to proudly announce, with much joy, that Iceland had equalized. I could have slapped her silly little gob, I honestly could. Actually, she had a very slappable face, come to think of it.
Anyway, at least we won. According to what I've heard, we were not exactly impressive, but in international football performances mean nothing as long as you win. Besides, we were missing so many players, not least thanks to the, er, "extracurricular" activities of Ferguson and McGregor. I can't help feeling that it came as a welcome excuse for George Burley to drop the both of them. It was also quite touching to see the Tartan Army show their views on the matter by roundly booing the players' names when they were read out - though there is just the slightest whiff of hypocrisy in the thought that Scotland fans are criticizing folk for boozing!
Burley seems to have managed things pretty well - he has hardly cast either of them into the international wilderness, and the punishment seems to fit the crime. Will he now strip Ferguson of the captaincy, though? That's going to be a tough one. You can't help feeling that if Bazza loses that title, he might do a Kris Boyd and chuck it all in a fit of pique. And while he is not the player he was a few years ago (and never has been the player he threatened to become as a youngster) we need all the quality we can get, even if Darren Fletcher and Scott Brown are more than capable of stepping into his shoes.
On the bright side, Scotland don't have a qualifier in June, when all the players will be knackered, and by the time we travel to Norway in August everyone else will have played two more games. If the Dutch continue to wallop everyone (most importantly, if they gub Norway at home) then we might well go to Oslo knowing we are a shoo-in for second, and have a slightly better idea of how many points we need - a minimum of five from the last three, but maybe seven. Let's face it, if you had offered us a playoff place at the start of the campaign, we would not only have bitten your hand off, but we would have attempted to cannibalize your elbow as well.
And the way the other groups are going, we could end up taking on the likes of Bosnia or Northern Ireland, or, god forbid, France, Turkey or Russia. But let's just get our names in that hat, eh?
L.
P.S. Apparently the whole Alan Shearer to Newcastle story was not the best April Fool's joke ever?! I suspect I may have to touch on it at some point...
I thought we played well on the whole. There were a few periods where we seemed to lose our shape and go off the boil though, the first time ended with us scoring and the second with them scoring. McCormack and Morrison especially were excellent and Hutton played just like he did against Italy, although it was more impressive seeing him terrorize Zambrotta than Random Randomson.
ReplyDeleteI hope Walter lays into McGregor and Ferguson when they get back to Murray park. Watching the CIS final I was wondering why both teams were pretty even through 90 minutes but Rangers looked dead on their feet in extra time. It all makes sense now. The "drink together, win together" attitude was fine during 9-in-a-row because every team did it. Not so much now, especially from the captain of the national team.