THE MEN WHO MADE HISTORY
So colourful, tearful, free of ego, in tune with the fans and happy to do the conga, Steve Clarke’s Scotland are
THE people’s team. In the wake of Jack Charlton’s passing earlier this year, that’s how one-time Everton midfielder Kevin Sheedy described the Republic of Ireland side that became far more than the sum of its parts on an odyssey around all manner of major tournaments in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It was built on camaraderie, graft, selflessness, organisation and a set way of playing. It revelled in its role as underdogs, lit a fire under football in the Emerald Isle after years of underachievement and galvanised a nation.
To a great degree, it represented the country at the time. Unpolished, unfashionable, stereotyped — nothing like the cosmopolitan Celtic Tiger of later years — and yet still capable of great things when unifying behind a common purpose.
It’s not just a mutual love of fly-fishing that Scotland boss Steve Clarke shares with Charlton now. In Serbia on Thursday night, something potentially more powerful than just the ending of 22 years of hurt by qualifying for the Euros was born under his watch.
In those tears shed by Ryan Christie on live television and that now-iconic footage from the team hotel of David Marshall leading the conga round tables littered with drink, we saw things we felt had been diluted to the point of extinction in the upper levels of a professional game disfigured by marketing, ego and greed.
We saw ourselves. We saw guys feeling just like us, behaving the way we would behave. Pure reactions. Pure emotion. Pure football.
Those pictures of the team going potty in the dressing-room to the sounds of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie — with big Andy Considine filling centre stage as he did in that Bo Peep video for his stag-do — summed it up.
A Champions League winner in Andy Robertson was jumping on the seats. English Premier League millionaires pogoed around like lunatics. It could just as easily have been a gang of wee laddies at school or a pub team just back at the bar for a skinful after winning their Sunday League.
Lost in the moment. In love with the game again. Just like the rest of us at home.
The excitement and exhilaration was so authentic, so genuine, that it makes it easy to believe those players really do feel what we, on the outside, feel. And that we can all be part of the road ahead — and the dream of reaching its end next June by packing out the national stadium — together.
Scottish football is at a crossroads. Reaching a finals needs to electrify it and create the conditions to keep it healthy for future generations.
The ready-made connection these players now have to the public gives us a head start. Because it is within their struggles, their flaws and their fallibility — what we see of ourselves in them — that their collective strength lies.
They are not distant. In fact, they are probably the most relatable Scotland team in living memory.
Sifting through the squad, you might equate them more to Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang — another outfit built on team spirit, long balls and energy. They are guys, on the whole, with an everyman quality that it just feels natural to root for.
Start with Lyndon Dykes. Four years ago, he was working in a factory pressing badges onto sports kits. Now, after spells at Queen of the South and Livingston, he’s arguably the most influential guy in the team. He has given Clarke the freedom to change the way we play and is, incredible as it seems, everything a Scotland centre-forward should be.
There is something comforting about seeing us go long to a fearless, physical target man again, pressing, swarming around the opposition to win the ball high up the park the way we did in Serbia.
You feel it is how we should play. It speaks to our heritage. Our nature.
Fellow veterans of those chaotic, blood-flecked mini-World Cups played out on the beachfront at Arcachon during France ’98 know this. As the Mexicans and the Italians who passed through town discovered, flicks and tricks and keepy-uppy will only get you so far when faced with launching it long and laying the boot in.
Back when Dykes was doing eight hours a day in the factory, Declan Gallagher was in the jail. Yet, if everything Dykes delivered in Belgrade was all you want from a traditional Scotland No9, Gallagher was the epitome of an old-school centre-half.
From those of us who felt playing guys from Motherwell would get you nowhere at international level, an apology is now due. Gallagher was immense. Stephen O’Donnell was rock-solid. And Clarke was right to stick with them as well as retaining the back three that looked unworkable not so long ago.
O’Donnell beat himself up publicly a year ago for his role in a Hampden loss to Russia. It was painful. You just wanted to stop and give him a cuddle. Now, the urge is to offer him a celebratory hug.
Considine touched us all when describing what it meant to play for Scotland following his debut, aged 33, against Slovakia. Marshall has proved it by turning up time and again for 16 years despite never really becoming the No1 until now.
For Callum Paterson and Kenny ‘Mayor of Norwich’ McLean, there seems no desire to flaunt their success on social media with flash cars and posh holidays. Not when a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a day of overt celebrations will do.
And as for Oli McBurnie, those photos of him giving the old Nescafe wave to the Cardiff fans from the Swansea end earlier in the year suggest he understands precisely what being a punter is all about.
McBurnie is a maverick. And what would a Scotland squad be without one of those? Or two, now that Leigh Griffiths, that touchline muncher of teacakes, is back in the mix following his own return from some pretty dark places.
Charlton’s Ireland team were often painted as journeymen making the most of what they had. In the likes of Paul McGrath, Sheedy, Ray Houghton and John Aldridge, though, there was real intelligence and skill.
We have those guys too. Yet, Scott McTominay finally cracking it on the right of a back three says as much about his lack of ego as his game awareness.
The rags-to-riches tale of Robertson, whose donations keep food banks operating in Glasgow, is known. Kieran Tierney is always good for a singsong through a loudhailer. And even John McGinn felt the need to mark the biggest moment of his career by paying homage to the playing fields of his Clydebank childhood.
Clarke looks to have channelled all this — all these different characters with different stories and different struggles — into a really strong culture. As you always hoped he would. Eventually.
In a way, he is the perfect figurehead for Scotland. He’s dour, old-school, doesn’t cut corners. Yet, given how he looked like he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards on telly on Friday, you sense he’d be a good guy to have a pint with too.
It is another thing he has in common with Charlton. Big Jack never spoke much about being a World Cup winner during his days in charge of Ireland. Clarke doesn’t dwell on his long career as a coach and player at the highest level. He gets on with building successful new teams full of guys who want to run through brick walls for him.
‘You were desperate to join up with the squad because you had such a great time,’ said Sheedy of Charlton’s reign. ‘There was good banter and we’d mix with the locals. We were like the people’s team.’
Here’s hoping we can all mix with Clarke and his boys soon. At Hampden and at Wembley in a glorious summer of rediscovering what it really is to live again.
Christie’s tears showed an understanding of what we are all going through and the fact the national side has given us something positive to hold onto in the continuing storm.
They’ve made it feel like they’re with us and we’re with them. They’ve shown us what it is to keep going through hard times and prosper.
That’s what being the people’s team is all about. And that’s what one unforgettable night in the Balkans has allowed them to become.