Tom English: 'Scotland's failure a lot greater in Golden Era than it is now'

Published on Tuesday 17 November 2009 21:49

ANY minute now, he's going to announce his interest in the Scotland job. I can almost hear him already, his English slightly broken, but his message coming across loud and clear. Oh yes, he'll say. It would be a great honour, a privilege to manage one of the great football nations of the world. With that, Ossie Ardiles' campaign will begin. And end.

We have three months of this ahead of us. Three months of Craig Levein and Walter Smith, Jim Jefferies and Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish, Stuart Baxter, Billy Davies, John Collins, David O'Leary, Pudsey Bear. And, after Pudsey, Ossie. And God knows who else.

Oh dear. We're navel-gazing ourselves to distraction. Whither Scottish football: The sequel to the sequel to the sequel. Where did it all go wrong? Who and what is to blame? The demise of a coach and of a national team is the fault of the teacher's strike. No, it's the government. Wrong, it's the SFA's doing. Scratch that, it's society as a whole that's the cause. PlayStation, XBox, Wii. Everybody sitting in front of the telly getting fat. Nobody kicking a ball on the street getting fit, not like the glory days of the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s when you couldn't find a rope strong enough to lasso the young Jim Baxters and Billy Bremners off the road and in for their tea.

This is what you hear a lot of. Where have all the great Scottish players gone? They were at it on a radio discussion the other night on the BBC. Some English pundits scratching their heads and wondering how come the Jinkys are no more and how sad it is that Scotland can't rekindle those glory days. What glory days?

The Baxters and the Bremners didn't achieve much with Scotland, did they? This Golden Era we keep looking back to and pining for was largely a flop. While we're looking for reasons why the Scottish team is so damn poor right now we may as well debate whether it was ever much good in the first place. Brilliant individuals, sure. World class players in nearly every position, no question. But collectively, for Scotland, surely they underachieved to an outrageous degree.

I would argue that given the extraordinary talent available in previous eras, the failure was a lot greater back then than it is now. I would say that by not getting the best out of their multi-talented Scotland teams, Ally MacLeod, Jock Stein and Alex Ferguson had as much – and perhaps more – to feel embarrassed about than the departed George Burley.

I mean, the Scotland of Baxter and Bremner, Greig and Gemmell, Law and Lennox, Johnstone, Murdoch and McNeill failed to qualify for the World Cups of 1966 and 1970. How the hell was that possible?

The Scotland of Dalglish and Souness, Jordan and Gemmell, Rioch and Robertson, Buchan and Kenny Burns, then the player of the year in England, made it to a World Cup. Big deal. It would have been harder for them not to make it to a World Cup given their ability. They were good enough to beat the finalists in 1978, but not consistent enough to make it through to the second round. Shameful.

The Scotland of Miller and Hansen, Souness and Strachan, Dalglish and Robertson, Jordan and McGrain were a letdown in 1982. Most of them were dripping with Scottish, English and European medals. In 1982 you had a superb team (on paper) and Stein as manager. In 1986 you had a formidable side – 12 of the squad had either played or would soon play in a European final with their club – and Ferguson as manager. And they came home early, too.

So let's not bang on about Scotland's glorious past for, if anything, as a national team, the 1960s through to the 1980s ought to be the cause of mass regret at lost opportunities. If we need to delve into history, Scotland's way forward is provided by a more recent vintage, by the pragmatic example set by Craig Brown, but mostly by Walter Smith and Alex McLeish.

Just before Smith took over from Berti Vogts, there was a comment from Martin O'Neill that came to mind yesterday. The gist of what O'Neill said was that anybody who even considered taking the job at Hampden ought to be wheeled away in a strait-jacket and locked up in a safe place where he can do no harm. O'Neill thought that given the paucity of talent available, the Scotland gig was an impossible task.

A short while later, Smith's team beat France. A little after that, McLeish's team went to Paris and beat France again. The Scotland of Smith and McLeish were pragmatic. Each player knew precisely what he had to do. They were organised and disciplined. Both managers managed to get the best out of their players which was almost good enough to get them out of a group that contained two teams that appeared in the World Cup final in Berlin a couple of years before.

Smith was told that he was accepting a poisoned chalice when he took the Scotland job. We hear it again now. Souness has been saying that not even Arsene Wenger could do anything with this Scotland team. That's nonsense. As is some of the hand-wringing at the state of the national team.

The team is on its knees, that's for sure, but this team is not as bad as Burley has made it look these past 22 months. Nobody is going to convince me that a Republic of Ireland side that went unbeaten in 12 qualifying games for the World Cup – and who are in France tonight for a second- leg play-off – have far greater personnel than Scotland.

They have a first-choice midfield of Liam Lawrence (Stoke), Glenn Whelan (Stoke), Keith Andrews (Blackburn) and Damien Duff (Fulham). Sean St Ledger (Middlesbrough) plays at the back with Kevin Kilbane (Hull). Kevin Doyle (Wolves) is up front. They're just honest pros who are efficient in the hands of Giovanni Trapattoni. Not entertaining, not creative, but organised and hard to beat. A decent Scotland manager can bring about similar changes pretty quickly, just as Smith and McLeish did.

It's not a poisoned chalice and it's not an impossible job. Scotland's past was not as great as some people think it was and its future is not as grim as the likes of Souness would have you believe, not if the right manager is selected. Over to you, Smudger.

Aggression crucial for Wallabies to be tamed at Murrayfield

AUSTRALIA may have lost all hope of achieving a Grand Slam, but their 20-20 draw in Dublin on Sunday showed us how far they have come in a relatively short space of time. Ireland were fortunate to escape unbeaten, since they lost the physical battle and were under such pressure in the scrum that they were hanging on at times. To stand a chance of victory on Saturday, Scotland are going to have to make this attritional.

Somebody is going to have to do a job on Rocky Elsom, the heartbeat of the Wallabies. In the modern game there is any amount of technical aspects to a Test match but there is one quality that remains as simple and important now as it was 50 years ago when the game was altogether different; the need to dictate through aggression.

The Scots' intensity was questionable against Fiji. This is a game that will show what they are made of.