A WAITING GAME

Move south left Bryson forgotten man at home

THE perceived wisdom is that by crossing the Border to better oneself at a higher l evel, i nvitations to make the r eturn trip to aid t he national cause on a regular basis will be forthcoming.

It was certainly a theory Craig Bryson strongly adhered to when he swapped Kilmarnock for Derby County two years ago. Yet, in terms of his phone beeping with good news on the day of Scotland squad announcements, well, perhaps the less said the better.

The 26-year-old was not only fit and available throughout his first season in the Midlands but played well enough to merit both the club and the supporters’ Player of the Year awards. As far as then Scotland manager Craig Levein was concerned, though, he might as well have been playing his football in Anchorage, Alaska.

Having won his first cap under Levein as a second-half substitute against the Faroe Islands in November 2010 while a Kilmarnock player, Bryson mysteriously had to wait until May of 2012 for the dubious honour of being an unused substitute against the USA in Florida.

If the intervening period was l argely f orgettable f r om t he nation’s perspective, then it’s also one the player reflects upon with little fondness.

Indeed, so forlorn did his hopes of a second call-up become, he began to deal with the situation by effectively blanking it out.

‘I’ve been overlooked in the past by a few managers when I thought I was playing well at Kilmarnock and down south,’ Bryson said, after belatedly being named in the party to face Croatia next Tuesday. ‘There wasn’t much I could do if they wouldn’t pick me.

‘I just needed to get on with it and keep doing what I was doing f or Derby County and then, hopefully, I would be able to push myself back in.

‘You will need to ask the previous managers why. I thought I might have had a wee sniff of getting in, but it wasn’t to be.’

Asked if he began to give up hoping under Levein, Bryson replied bluntly: ‘I did, if I am being honest.

‘You would get a wee bit excited before the squad came out but I always ended up being l eft disappointed. I did stop looking.’

It’s hard not to have a degree of sympathy with a player who was not only playing at a level where Levein was happy to sniff talent out, but who was performing at the peak of his powers.

Polite and consummately professional, it could hardly have been something he said.

And, even accounting for the fact that midfield i s undoubtedly Scotland’s strongest area, a repeated failure not even to make a squad of 22 did grind with him.

‘ If you l ook at the Scotland teams, we are probably at our strongest in the middle of the park,’ he conceded.

‘We have a lot of midfield options and there are a lot of players who are playing i n the Barclays Premier League. You have to battle it out with them.

‘ Yet, when I signed for Derby County from Kilmarnock, I thought if I could come down here and establish myself as a good Championship player, then I would have a chance of getting in.

‘In my first season, I was Player of the Year at Derby and I never really got a sniff.

‘I think I built on those performances over the next season and I have also started well this year.

‘ Seeing ot her Championship players being picked does get you a wee bit down and it makes you think: “What do I have to do to get a chance?”.’

Did he ever think about going public with his frustrations?

‘No, not at all,’ Bryson countered. ‘I’m not the type of person who would come out and say something like that, even if I felt like saying it.

‘You just need to keep being professional and doing well. That is what has happened.

‘I just kept on trying to do what I could for Derby in the hope that one day I would get back in.’

Maintaining a diplomatic stance has finally bore fruit. With Gordon Strachan domiciled in the Midlands, Bryson’s continuing success story with the Rams has been right under the Scotland manager’s nose. Not that he could have missed it.

‘The manager has been to a few Derby games and I have obviously done enough to be recalled,’ said Bryson (left). ‘Even if I am on the bench or in the stand, it is good just to be back in the Scotland set-up.

‘This is the first time I have been selected and not called up when others dropped out. I’m delighted with that.’

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