TONIGHT, Scotland play what many have described as their most important football match in three decades, when they take on Serbia in a Nations League playoff for a place in the Euro 2020 finals (which, due to Covid will take place in the summer of 2021).
This will be the fifth time Scotland have been involved in playoffs for major tournaments, and it has to be said, our record isn't wonderful: we lost out over two legs to England in 1999 for Euro 2000 and to the Netherlands in 2003 for Euro 2004; beat Australia in 1985 to qualify for the Mexico World Cup the following year, and in 1961 lost 4-2 to Czechoslovakia in a one-off World Cup contest in neutral Brussels.
It was no disgrace to lose the Czechs: that team went on to reach the final in Chile in 1962, losing to Brazil.
The Herald's Cyril Horne, though, was incensed at the events of that day in Belgium: "If the football officials of Scotland do not protest in the strongest possible manner against Czechoslovakia and the referee who combined to knock them out of the World Cup here this afternoon they are not worth their salt," he wrote. "[The Czechs] were permitted to hack and trip throughout to-day's match without suffering other than free kicks against them and gesticulations of displeasure from the referee. This was an affront to the entire concept of proper administration of the game."
Scotland's two goals were scored by Liverpool's Ian St John, seen in our main picture in a Scotland training session at Rugby Park, Kilmarnock. St John, now 82, had an illustrious career with Liverpool in the 1960s, winning two League titles and an FA Cup, but he is perhaps most fondly remembered for his unlikely TV bromance with Tottenham and England legend Jimmy Greaves.
The Saint and Greavsie show (above) ran on ITV from 1985 to 1992; it ended when ITV lost the rights to broadcast top-flight football with the arrival of the newly-formed Premier League.
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