Talented band of brothers is now delivering
THEY are indeed the happy few, forever bound together by adolescent adventures as age-grade internationalists. Nothing less than a band of footballing brothers.
So the bright young talents currently lighting up our national team bring more to the senior ranks than even their obvious talents.
They carry with them a resilience, a togetherness, that has already been crucial. It may make all the difference between triumph and disaster on the road to Euro 2020.
Ryan Fraser looks around the current Scotland squad and rhymes off the names of maybe half a dozen guys who have come up through the Under-19s and 21s.
The Bournemouth winger feels this shared experience, going through the same highs and lows together, is definitely a factor when things get tight.
And he made a strong case just by pointing to the evidence of Tuesday night at Hampden, when Alex McLeish’s relatively inexperienced side recovered from the loss of an early goal to beat Israel 3-2.
Fraser, putting himself back in the moments immediately after Beram Kayal’s early strike, explained: ‘When I look at it, so many of us came through the age groups together playing for Scotland — and we all believe in what each other can do.
‘If you get uptight about things, you’re going to make more mistakes and it can be easy to do that when the fans get on your back a bit, like when we went behind against Israel.
‘But it shows character to come through that tough stage. The next ten minutes or so were difficult but I think together we showed what we’re capable of.
‘Who did I come through with? Ryan Christie, Callum McGregor, Graeme Shinnie, Stuart Armstrong, John McGinn … one or two others as well.
‘That brings togetherness. It’s just small things, like sitting around the table together.
‘Maybe, in recent years, players have split into little groups and not mixed with each other. But in the last few trips it’s been a lot better.
‘It feels more like a club side now. Even on our days off, we don’t go away individually and do our own things.
‘A lot of us went to Nando’s the other day, just small things like that.’
Other piri piri chicken restaurants are available, of course.
Behind the fun, though, there’s a serious point.
‘Once you get to know each other better away from football, you want to do more for each other on the pitch,’ insisted Fraser. ‘You hear everybody’s stories and their backgrounds — it makes you fight a little harder for them.
‘Mixing like that is something we do ourselves but it’s also something the manager encourages.
‘The gaffer likes to give us days off. But he always tells us to go out and do stuff together and we love to do that.’
Fraser doesn’t balk at the ‘band of brothers’ tag, the 24-year old saying: ‘Yeah. I think you’ve seen — apart from the game away to Israel, when I wasn’t there and don’t know what happened — things are a lot better.
‘Training is fun, everyone is laughing — taking it seriously but, at the same time, having fun with everyone. That’s good for team spirit.’
Scotland’s history is littered with great youth sides who fail to translate their potential into senior success.
Fraser, a first-team player with Aberdeen at 16, dares to dream that this time it will be different. That the guys born in the mid-1990s are going to break a cycle of expectation, followed by disappointment.
‘We can do it,’ he said. ‘Israel wasn’t easy and we’ll face tougher opponents. But our last two wins gave us the confidence to win the next ones.
‘We still showed a bit of inexperience letting Israel get the second goal.
‘Being so young as a team, while we’ve been scoring goals of late, we’re also going to ship some at times. But everyone is confident.
‘Definitely, I should have scored against Israel. But I’ll settle for my two assists!’
So much of Tuesday night was about the performance of one player. James Forrest’s hat-trick inevitably raises questions about just how far the Celtic star might go in the game.
Surprisingly, given his own decision to head south at a young age, Fraser would never advise his international team-mate to make a mad dash for the riches of the Premier League.
‘I don’t think he or the other lads need to come to England,’ he insisted.
‘Everyone has their own ambitions. I wanted to go down south but that doesn’t mean everybody else has to as well.
‘James is doing brilliantly for Celtic, which is a massive club. So is Rangers and then there’s Aberdeen.
‘Everyone has their own idea of what they want to do. And that will define them. As long as they’re enjoying their football and doing well, I’ll be glad for them.’
Happy for any success enjoyed by his sporting brethren, and at ease in their company, Fraser is determined to do whatever it takes to get Scotland over the line.