Wings Over Scotland | Failure To Learn

Scotland take on Haiti on Sunday 14 June (in the wee small hours of the morning), so this is nice, isn’t it?

At least, it would be if incompetent idiots weren’t in charge.

Firstly because the SNP – a party with a long and dismaying record of promising things it then doesn’t deliver – has made this announcement without the power to enact it. Bank Holidays are determined by royal proclamation, so all the SNP can do is beg King Charles for it and hope he takes pity on them.

But secondly because they’ve proposed it for Monday 15 June, the day AFTER the Haiti match. And that demonstrates a frankly terrible ability to recall Scotland’s record at World Cup finals, and especially the opening games thereof.

1950 – Scotland qualify, but the SFA refuse to participate because the team came second in its qualifying group.

1954 – Scotland send just 13 players to the tournament, despite being allowed a squad of 22, and lose their first match 1-0 to Austria. The manager resigned and the team lost its second and final game 7-0 to Uruguay.

(It’s worth taking a brief moment here to note just how weird the 1954 World Cup was. The group stage comprised groups of four teams, but each side only played two games. Scotland didn’t face Czechoslovakia at all.)

1958 – A creditable opening draw against Yugoslavia. Yay! (Followed by two defeats and going out bottom of the group.)

1974 – A win against minnows Zaire in their only ever appearance at the finals, but by just two goals (Yugoslavia put nine past the hapless Africans), leading to Scotland failing to qualify on goal difference.

1978 – An infamous national humiliation: Ally McLeod’s team has its chances cockily hyped to the moon in advance of the tournament, but Teófilo Cubillas burns his name into the brain of every Scot alive at the time forever as Peru gub us 3-1. (Followed by an arguably even more embarrassing failure to beat Iran and going out on goal difference again after beating Holland.)

1982 – A second opening-game victory, but conceding two goals to lowly New Zealand leads once more to eventual elimination on goal difference after Alan Hansen infamously took out Willie Miller in the crucial last game vs the USSR.

1986 – Beaten 1-0 by Denmark. (Then a loss to West Germany and failure to beat the thugs of Uruguay, who are forced to play almost the whole game with 10 men after a 1st-minute red card. Three teams qualify out of the four-team group, but Scotland finish bottom with 1 point and go home to think again.)

1990 – Another low point for the ages, as Andy Roxburgh’s side go down 1-0 to Costa Rica in their first ever appearance at the finals and Juan Cayasso adds his name to Cubillas’ in Scottish fans’ catalogue of mental scars. (Despite then beating Sweden, Scotland go out after a late loss to Brazil.)

1998 – Scotland play Brazil for a second World Cup finals match in a row, and lose the tournament curtain-raiser unluckily to a Tom Boyd own-goal. We go out bottom of the group after a 3-0 battering from Morocco, who along with Brazil have been drawn against us again this time.

And that was it for 28 years (by a distance our longest absence from the tournament). Our opening-game record reads P8 W2 D1 L5, with the only wins coming against Zaire and New Zealand and the most recent of those being 44 years ago.

Scotland fans have learned to moderate their expectations accordingly, but it appears that the SNP haven’t, attempting to schedule a celebration just hours after the biggest potential banana skin against a team ranked 84th in the world.

(Imagine the riddy if we’d had a bank holiday after Peru or Costa Rica.)

For the love of God, you unbelievable halfwits, if you’re going to do this at least do it a day or two BEFORE the game (the tournament starts on Thursday 11th), and tempt fate just a LITTLE bit less. We’re going to need all the help from it that we can get.

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[EDIT 6 January] It’s even more useless than it seemed.