Football games this close to midsummer are usually the definition of soporific. Players are shattered after a long season and already have their minds on their summer holidays, and for fans they can be a bit of a let down after the climax of the club campaign.
Not in Dublin on Saturday though. Ireland and Scotland played with all the blood and thunder you’d expect of what at times resembled an All-Star game - if the English Championship (for this was the standard of the fare on show) had such an event. If had been played in January between two club sides, the cliche “a proper cup tie” would have been rather overused.
Thanks to the win at Celtic Park in November, Scotland knew a point would be a satisfactory outcome although ,given Ireland's limited nature, a better performance would surely have resulted in a win. The big story before kick off was Gordon Strachan’s decision to select Matt Ritchie ahead of Ikechi Anya. It was a gamble, but one with no particularly clear reasoning behind it. Ritchie has been impressive this season in a good Bournemouth team but has yet to turn heads for Scotland. We may have been starved of success recently, but it’s still going to take more than a goal against Qatar to endear you to the Tartan Army, particularly when you replace one of the most popular members of the squad. Not only did Ritchie contribute nothing in attack himself, his lack of understanding with Alan Hutton took away all threat down the right hand side.
In successive qualifiers the wide player has suffered the ignominy of been substituted at half-time. Against Gibraltar, he was sacrificed when his manager decided he had seen enough of the 'one centre-half strategy'. On this occasion, though, I imagine Ritchie's only defence was to point at team-mate Craig Forsyth and say, “You’re taking me off ahead of that guy?!” From the start the Derby County left back looked completely out of his depth. When he wasn’t being overpowered by Jon Walters or watching Seamus Coleman run past him repeatedly, he was passing to Irishmen or, one more than one ignominous occasion, demonstrating perfectly how not to take a throw in. It was a horror show that actually served to distract from the all-round poor performances from many of his teammates in that opening period.
Replacing Ritchie with Anya did the trick, not least by protecting Forsyth; Coleman was now pinned back by a nippy winger. Scotland came out on the front foot and quickly scored through a less aesthetically pleasing version of Shaun Maloney’s goal in November. The energy and attacking intent was much better in the second half, and the draw was deserved, but (as Strachan bemoaned afterwards) unfortunately the passing never quite improved beyond 'slack', and so they were never able to build quite enough pressure to get a winner.
Although Strachan admirably dealt with questions about the officiating after the game, they did put in a Curate’s Egg of a performance. The referee generally let the game flow without letting things get out of hand, but the decisions to only book James McCarthy for leading with an elbow and, of course, allowing Walters’ goal to stand were poor at best. The latter decision was a shocker; from the moment the corner was taken, Walters was never in a position from which he would have been onside after a teammate's touch. Even as someone who spends most of the year watching Scottish officials, I could only gawp.
A win in Georgia in September would make Scotland heavy favourites to at least finish third and push on to try and secure automatic qualification. It will require a much better performance than this however, and considering what happened the last time we went to Georgia (wearing maroon wasn’t even the worst part) a win can’t be taken for granted. Six points for Ireland from their next two games, Gibraltar away and Georgia at home, could put the pressure right back on Strachan’s side. But for the first time in a long time, Scotland aren’t playing catch up in a qualifying campaign and relying on other results going our way.
2014/15 has been been a good season for the national team, Let's hope 2015/16 ends with a long-awaited return to major tournament football.
Iain Meredith (IM) is technically a Rangers fan, but these days he tends to support them ironically. He only agreed to help with this blog because now he can tell his wife that he's "only watching the game to help a friend out".
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