Catchart Circle

The quoted figure of 14,400 will of course be the entire allocation for the SFA. Not all of these will be for the SSC and its members.

I believe this could be the case as I heard this will be the criteria for entry to club games in England this season. I assume you get some sort of certificate to say you have been vaccinated. There is no way the entire population of the UK will have it by June. If you are a healthy twenty five year old regardless of how many points you have your chances of attending the Euros are greatly disadvantaged. Sometimes I'm glad I'm an old git.

How sad that TA Legend Ricky from Dalkeith passed away less than two weeks before qualification. No doubt the Wallpaper Man would have loved watching the shoot out on TV but at least he lived through a period of regular qualification I guess. I can think of a few others too who have passed in recent times. Couldn't help but think of them last night.

If they were trying to deter supporters from travelling it would make complete sense as they wouldn't authorise visas. Think this was denied by UEFA last week but you would expect them to have a plan B in place.

So that's Bzzzz. Met him a few times without realising! Need to buy the national hero a drink next time!

Brazil at the Emirates was live in 2011 on STV

STV showed the game live in colour after coming to an agreement with Park Gardens around 24 hours before kick off. They also reran the whole match again the following Saturday evening. However you may very well have watched in black and white as many households could not afford a colour set until beyond '73. Even towards the end of the 1970s commentators would commence by announcing the line ups then adding `and for those of you watching in black and white ****** are in the dark shirts.' We got our first colour telly ahead of the 1972 Olympics but were by no means among the first to embrace the change.

That Norway game when we secured the required point for Italy was live on STV. Also V Argentina in March 1990 was also live again on STV, most unusual for a home friendly.

Sadly true as Ted Christopher posted on Facebook I was told. A true legend of the TA been travelling since the Sixties, probably longer than anyone. RIP Ricky

We also lost to the Italians in the the first Toulon tournament on pens in '77 )U221s). Plus the U23s lost a shoot out to the Dutch at Easter Road the previous year.

Do you seriously think it is okay for someone to take such a vital kick when he had missed the last two? And just for the record I never booed McAllisiter - but understand why some fans did. It amazes me how some people rewrite history and I suspect some of his defenders today were amongst his critics at the time. Don't you remember the lack of sympathy when he was injured ahead of France 98? McAllister was a good, even great player for Scotland, but he was not a good captain. He wanted to take everything, every free kick, corner and penalty. I recall a debate on Off The Ball about when he was christened `ma ba' McAlllister' and how the lack of sympathy for his World Cup withdrawal was a reaction to the belief that no matter what there were no circumstances under which Craig Brown would remove him from the captaincy which many felt he took to extremes with his insistence on taking of all the set pieces.

I disagree. He even made a comment after the game that it had made up for Wembley. Nobody would have called him a shitebag if Durie- who was taking penalties for his club at the time - or anyone else taken the kick. Whey would they as he had already missed twice from the spot.

Going back as far as 1972 Willie Morgan missed twice from the spot. After this it was an unwritten rule that if you missed a penalty in a Scotland jersey you never took another. Rioch, Hutchison, Bremner and Jardine all missed and got no second chance with someone else was designated as the taker. McAllister missed twice V Malta and England. In between those fixtures Nevin scored from the spot V Estonia but, significantly, McAllister did not take part in that game. In a vital World Cup qualifier in Belarus 12 months after Euro 96 there were no goals into the second half when we were awarded a penalty. Gary Mac used his captains privelige to take the kick, presumably to make him feel better after Wembley. Although he scored I never thought of him the same after that as he was arguably gambling our qualification chances against his ego. Had we been a couple of goals ahead I would have had no problem with him taking a pen but not at 0-0 and that stage of the game. Of course the most important thing is he scored and we went to France and as Nevin did not play in Minsk there was perhaps no other obvious candidate.

We were also awarded a pen in the next game after the East German match V Spain at Hampden in '74. But the least said about that the better.

Two in `home' game with Malta in 1993- one missed and one netted at Ibrox. Ditto for East Germany at Hampden in '74. Both results were also the same, 3-0 home wins.

It's actually a digital copy sourced from the ITV Sport archive rather than an off air recording - VCRs were only available to the more affluent at the time. When they were copying from the 2 inch tape of the World of Sport edition they miscalculated which is why the build up and first minute or so of the game are absent. The missing sequence with the same Brian Moore commentary is however available here on this SFA VHS release which omitted THAT tackle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnWmsNX0dQQ Incidentally I am afraid VAR would not have awarded us a first half penalty as the referee later explained he had already blown for half time. before Dalglish was upended.

The next SFA meeting is also mid August. I would imagine this will be discussed so we should have a better idea in ten days or so.

A few of us used the bar of the hotel the media were based in in Mexico, one of the big chains next to the independence statue. Although the price of the rooms was well outwith our budgets the beer was reasonably priced compared to some of the tourist places. One prominent fan of the period claimed to have bumped into Jack Charlton at Belfast airport after we had qualified for the Spain World Cup with a hard earned draw. It was related that he had been quite rude to the fan and derogatory regarding Scotlands chances in the World Cup dismissing us as `bloody lucky Jocks' with the type of language we expected of their media. As the hard core of travelling fans was relatively small at the time and we all more or less knew each other, this resulted in Charlton being viewed in pretty much the same light as Jimmy Hill. He was in Mexico with his wife and there were initially negative glances and whispered comments when he was in the bar which was almost as often as we were. But you could not have met a nicer couple and he often went out his way to speak with the Scots fans and pose for pictures. Needless to say that the fan who had encountered him in Belfast came in for quite a bit of stick. A really down to earth guy who had never forgotten his working class roots. He had just been appointed Republic of Ireland manager at the time so would have certainly been watching the Scots performances as we had a Euro qualifier in Dublin later that year. I do recall a lot of resistance from Irish fans initially with one banner reading `Go home Union Jack' and he was also heavily criticised for assembling a national side of dubious origins. The saying went something like you only had to have had a sip of Guinness in your lifetime to meet Jacks selection criteria. He certainly won them over and his international record is greater than that of any Scotland manager, qualifying for three major tournaments. He also progressed from the first phase of two of those, again a feat never achieved by a Scotland manager. I remember a friendly guy from Mexico - as was incidentally Jimmy Hill. My favourite quote of Jacks was being interviewed live on ITV seconds after Ireland had beaten England 1-0 at Euro 88. "Mixed feelings Jack?" he was asked. He looked directly at the camera and replied, "I haven't got any mixed feelings whatsoever!"

There was an event held in Edinburgh a few months after the tournament, probably around August/September on a Sunday. Somewhere in the south side - pretty sure the bar was called Oddfellows. The fan and policewoman were both invited to promote the event with them fully expected to recreate the moment. The WPC turned up as the guest of honour ........................................................accompanied by her husband.

After three caps Watson moved to London in 1882 which did indeed make him ineligible for Scotland. Initially he spent a couple of years with a side called Swifts before signing for Corinthians. His colour does not particularly seem to have inhibited his career at any time and many match reports make no mention of this, focussing on his ability. He was actually born in the colonies and I think his Scottish father was involved in the slave trade which would explain why he was there though this needs confirming.

How refreshing that this thread has not descended to the level of `it's oor game and no' their's!' - well at least not yet! I always refer to the respected Bob Crampseys research in `The First 100 Years of the Scottish Football League.' Quoting Crampsey -` Although association football developed almost simultaneously in Scotland and England there was a difference in ethos and approach almost from the outset...... .......It was not surprising that England, whence the initial impetus had come, continued to lead the way in the organisation of the game ..... .. in the formation of a national association and a football league, in the creation of a cup competition and, perhaps oddly, in the adoption of professionalism, England would lead and Scotland fall shortly behind in each case. Another Scot, journalist John Rafferty, says in `One Hundred Years of Scottish Football,' `The Football Association had been formed in London in 1863 and their rules had inspired some young men in Glasgow to form Queens Park in 1867. The FA Cup was instituted in 1871 to inspire the start of the Scottish Cup two years later. The game in its present form came from England. Even in Scotland this has to be admitted.' So while the game may have been played first up here - in a crude form which allowed handling of the ball - the organised sport as we know it today had its rules drawn up in the south.

Watched the Norway game from Bordeaux the other week and we were denied an absolute stonewaller when Durie was sent crashing to the turf in the box at 0-0. Much more a pen than Gallagher going down in the opening game.

Agreed - the penalty was 50/50 at best. We had our best spell just before the award then it all fell apart so ironically might have snatched a draw it the pen hadn't been given. England did up their game though after the break. Didn't think our penalty against Brazil two years later was valid either.

Well if you don't fancy that you can always watch ITV4 at the same time 😃 - https://tv24.co.uk/b/qahlb0-111w

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52653877