Is this the lowest point of being a Scotland supporter?

[Dogbiscuit]

Wales, N.I., England and Ireland now all through to the last 16. Wales and N.I. enjoying their first ever Euros tournament and first major tournament since the 1950's. Ireland still grinding out results since screwing us with their shock win over Germany. And England drawing the minnow as usual!

And us sat at home, having never made it past the group stage of a major tournament, watching how it's done. N.I. and Wales are both saying they can win the tournament! Why do you never hear this kind of confidence from us? Instead it's always caution. Ireland beating Germany in qualifying was a bitter pill to swallow, but we should have taken care of them in Dublin. Instead we showed the usual caution and didn't take our opportunity. We should have all but sealed our qualification away to Georgia, but just as in 2007, we didn't turn up.

I don't believe for one minute that Ireland are better than us, or that Wales and N.I. are vastly superior teams. As I said in a previous post, I'm sick of people always saying we're pish. We're not pish, we're losers, and there is a difference. We keep falling at the same hurdles time after time with different crops of players. It's our psyche. I believe that we're so used to being put down as a nation, often passively, that we've adopted it as our own. And as a consequence, we don't REALLY want to win. I'm so convinced that our problem is psychological that I think had Scotland voted yes it would have shaken that monkey off it's back and qualified, but of course we'll never know (at least not for this tournament).

I don't mean to wallow in self pity, but is this the worst position we have been in as Scotland supporters?

[todd]

28 minutes ago, Dogbiscuit said:

Wales, N.I., England and Ireland now all through to the last 16. Wales and N.I. enjoying their first ever Euros tournament and first major tournament since the 1950's. Ireland still grinding out results since screwing us with their shock win over Germany. And England drawing the minnow as usual!

And us sat at home, having never made it past the group stage of a major tournament, watching how it's done. N.I. and Wales are both saying they can win the tournament! Why do you never hear this kind of confidence from us? Instead it's always caution. Ireland beating Germany in qualifying was a bitter pill to swallow, but we should have taken care of them in Dublin. Instead we showed the usual caution and didn't take our opportunity. We should have all but sealed our qualification away to Georgia, but just as in 2007, we didn't turn up.

I don't believe for one minute that Ireland are better than us, or that Wales and N.I. are vastly superior teams. As I said in a previous post, I'm sick of people always saying we're pish. We're not pish, we're losers, and there is a difference. We keep falling at the same hurdles time after time with different crops of players. It's our psyche. I believe that we're so used to being put down as a nation, often passively, that we've adopted it as our own. And as a consequence, we don't REALLY want to win. I'm so convinced that our problem is psychological that I think had Scotland voted yes it would have shaken that monkey off it's back and qualified, but of course we'll never know (at least not for this tournament).

I don't mean to wallow in self pity, but is this the worst position we have been in as Scotland supporters?

We've gotten 3 and 4 points a heap of times in tournaments. In that respect they haven't done any better, tournament wise, than us!

[thplinth]

Qualifying for a world cup with only 16 teams is arguably a more significant achievement than anything achieved by the Uk & Ireland teams so far. But Wales or NI (is it?) are guaranteed last 8 now. A flukey win after that for the victor and they are in legends territory. 

[Toepoke]

1 hour ago, Dogbiscuit said:

Wales and N.I. enjoying their first ever Euros tournament and first major tournament since the 1950's.

Northern Ireland made both World Cups in the 80s. Did better than us too.

I guess I'm reaching the "veteran" stage, but as great as it was qualifying for tournaments, the failures when we got there felt much much worse than I'm feeling at the moment.

I'm actually really enjoyng the Euros, I was gutted when we failed to make it of course but I'm long since over it.  I'll save worring about how Scotland are doing until the autumn...

 

[Hadenuff]

Of course it's the lowest point. Scotland have played at 10 major tournaments and have failed to get out of the group stages on every single occasion. No other team can match that which is bad enough but this time round offered the best ever chance to not only qualify for a finals but once there to make it out of the group but we failed again. The comments from WGS about us being better than many of the teams at the Euros are quite frankly embarassing, luckily for him no one else is listening as they are all busy taking part in a major tournament. Can you really see Scotland finishing ahead of England in the next qualifiers, absolutely no chance of that and I suspect our chances will be remote after the Wembley game of coming second so the prospects are grim.

 

[DoonTheSlope]

IMHO yes. Im booked up to Wembkey but really feel like giving Malta and Slovakia a body swerve. I couldn't give a monkeys fukk anymore about the national team

[ceudmilefailte]

2 hours ago, Toepoke said:

Northern Ireland made both World Cups in the 80s. Did better than us too.

I guess I'm reaching the "veteran" stage, but as great as it was qualifying for tournaments, the failures when we got there felt much much worse than I'm feeling at the moment.

I'm actually really enjoyng the Euros, I was gutted when we failed to make it of course but I'm long since over it.  I'll save worring about how Scotland are doing until the autumn...

 

Drawing with Iran was easily the lowest point we ever sunk to.

[dandydunn]

On 23 June 2016 at 6:36 PM, Dogbiscuit said:

Wales, N.I., England and Ireland now all through to the last 16. Wales and N.I. enjoying their first ever Euros tournament and first major tournament since the 1950's. Ireland still grinding out results since screwing us with their shock win over Germany. And England drawing the minnow as usual!

And us sat at home, having never made it past the group stage of a major tournament, watching how it's done. N.I. and Wales are both saying they can win the tournament! Why do you never hear this kind of confidence from us? Instead it's always caution. Ireland beating Germany in qualifying was a bitter pill to swallow, but we should have taken care of them in Dublin. Instead we showed the usual caution and didn't take our opportunity. We should have all but sealed our qualification away to Georgia, but just as in 2007, we didn't turn up.

I don't believe for one minute that Ireland are better than us, or that Wales and N.I. are vastly superior teams. As I said in a previous post, I'm sick of people always saying we're pish. We're not pish, we're losers, and there is a difference. We keep falling at the same hurdles time after time with different crops of players. It's our psyche. I believe that we're so used to being put down as a nation, often passively, that we've adopted it as our own. And as a consequence, we don't REALLY want to win. I'm so convinced that our problem is psychological that I think had Scotland voted yes it would have shaken that monkey off it's back and qualified, but of course we'll never know (at least not for this tournament).

I don't mean to wallow in self pity, but is this the worst position we have been in as Scotland supporters?

They didn't screw us. 

Mozart of the problem that people blame other nations for our failures?

If the players and manager did their job accordingly,Ireland wouldn't of qualified. 

Look closer to home before blaming others. 

[Dogbiscuit]

3 hours ago, dandydunn said:

They didn't screw us. 

Mozart of the problem that people blame other nations for our failures?

If the players and manager did their job accordingly,Ireland wouldn't of qualified. 

Look closer to home before blaming others. 

Read the rest of my post.

[scoobydoo]

The other countries qualifying for the finals was the previous low point. Them all making the knockout phase rubs it in. 

 

Strachan is a clown and the SFA are not fit for purpose. But we all knew this anyway.

[Orraloon]

On 23/06/2016 at 10:28 PM, ceudmilefailte said:

Drawing with Iran was easily the lowest point we ever sunk to.

Aye, that was pretty low but at least we did that at the finals. That year only 10 European teams qualified. This year we couldn't qualify for a tournament where 24 European teams qualified. 

Other low, low points, for me, have been drawing with Faroe Islands and the first 30 minutes of the Wales game at Hampden. That half hour was the worst I have ever seen Scotland play.

Edited June 25, 2016 by Orraloon

[hoofitharder]

I suppose at this moment in time Scotland as a footballing nation is at its lowest ebb. But for me personally the lowest i ever felt was after a draw with Austria at Hampden we needed to win our last two games at home to Austria and away to Belgium. I was a naive 18 year old and i believed all the hype about how good we were. the guy who run the buses was arranging a bus to go to Brussels if we won and i was absolutely buzzing.We only drew and i was gutted i have never felt so down after a game of football.And even after all these years i have still to watch scotland off these shores but one day.

Ian

[scoobydoo]

You didn't miss much in Brussels either. Scotland were utter shite that night as well.

Another game without a shot on target if I mind right and that wee mooth robertson's motocade nearly killed me. I nearly got arrested trying to have a word with him about it.

[dandydunn]

10 hours ago, Dogbiscuit said:

Read the rest of my post.

I did. 

After you blamed someone else for our not qualifying,the rest was basically nonsense. 

If players didn't want to win,I would doubt they would bother turning up and save themselves for club games. 

They have had some good results and performances in the last few campaigns,which could build to the next performance,but it doesn't. 

So either they're not good enough to be consistent or the management can't turn the positivity of a win/strong performance into the next game. 

[Dogbiscuit]

Acknowledging that a freak result in another game ultimately ended our qualification, while questioning where we went wrong in our previous games is hardly blaming someone else for not qualifying.

[Green_Tide_Rising]

1 hour ago, Dogbiscuit said:

Acknowledging that a freak result in another game ultimately ended our qualification, while questioning where we went wrong in our previous games is hardly blaming someone else for not qualifying.

While I do appreciate what your saying .....

As an Ireland fan......I could turn that around and say that we were very dissatisfied with our performances against Scotland and extremely unhappy that we only took 1 point off ye(no disrespect to Scotland meant)....hence we made up for it by beating Germany but also beating georgia twice. Equally while u may view our result at home to germany as a freak (which you are entitled to) ....you shouldn't forget that we took pts from them in germany also.

 

While as Scotland fan you rightly want your team to improve, don't think that ireland fans are 100% happy either with our campaign just cos we qualified. 

I was unhappy with  our performances against Poland and georgia at home ,poland away and both Scotland games.

While our nations shud always aim to improve , due to our small playing pools , it is always going to be tough to iron out all the mistakes. Equally on another day Scotland could have qualified instead of us because like ye guys we made plenty of errors also.

[bonny78]

it's the lowest ever in terms of the moderen world with social media, e mail etc..   i didn't even have the internet when we last made the finals.

 

But don't worry lads..... we start a new one in September

[Dogbiscuit]

5 hours ago, Green_Tide_Rising said:

While I do appreciate what your saying .....

As an Ireland fan......I could turn that around and say that we were very dissatisfied with our performances against Scotland and extremely unhappy that we only took 1 point off ye(no disrespect to Scotland meant)....hence we made up for it by beating Germany but also beating georgia twice. Equally while u may view our result at home to germany as a freak (which you are entitled to) ....you shouldn't forget that we took pts from them in germany also.

 

While as Scotland fan you rightly want your team to improve, don't think that ireland fans are 100% happy either with our campaign just cos we qualified. 

I was unhappy with  our performances against Poland and georgia at home ,poland away and both Scotland games.

While our nations shud always aim to improve , due to our small playing pools , it is always going to be tough to iron out all the mistakes. Equally on another day Scotland could have qualified instead of us because like ye guys we made plenty of errors also.

Yeh 'unexpected' would be a better word to use to describe Ireland's victory over Germany. It sounds like Scotland and Ireland both underperformed against each other. Maybe the hype of the games made them tentative affairs. I think the bug bear with Scotland though, is that we put ourselves in a commanding position and then threw it away. As we often do, we did the hard part and then shot ourselves in the foot. I've seen Scotland repeat this scenario enough times to question our collective mentality. I would argue that on another day, we still would have shot ourselves in the foot!

Ireland on the other hand remind me of how Scotland were in the Euro 2008 qualifiers. A decent team punching above it's weight, scoring late goals and taking the scalp of France twice. Basically riding our luck (until we slipped up in our penultimate against Georgia!).

[Toepoke]

14 hours ago, scoobydoo said:

You didn't miss much in Brussels either. Scotland were utter shite that night as well.

Another game without a shot on target if I mind right and that wee mooth robertson's motocade nearly killed me. I nearly got arrested trying to have a word with him about it.

I think he's talking about another trip to Brussels. The Austria - Belgium double header was in 1979...

 

[Yorkie]

Naw, still think the lowest point was the Vogts era. Endless run of soul crushing friendly disappointments against the likes of Canada while Stevie Crawford lumbered around ineffectually up front. Almost gave up on the national side altogether during that period. 

[Boynze]

16 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

Naw, still think the lowest point was the Vogts era. Endless run of soul crushing friendly disappointments against the likes of Canada while Stevie Crawford lumbered around ineffectually up front. Almost gave up on the national side altogether during that period. 

At least we beat Canada.

 

the worst was either 3 nil home loss to Hungary, or 2 nil home loss to Austria, with Paul Gallagher making a right hash of a kick out as I recall.

[ironbrew]

42 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

Naw, still think the lowest point was the Vogts era. Endless run of soul crushing friendly disappointments against the likes of Canada while Stevie Crawford lumbered around ineffectually up front. Almost gave up on the national side altogether during that period. 

Seem to remember us getting to playoffs and several full Hampdens during Vogts era. Lots of defeats in friendlies but new players got experience in full and B team which following managers benefitted from.

[ironbrew]

27 minutes ago, Boynze said:

At least we beat Canada.

 

the worst was either 3 nil home loss to Hungary, or 2 nil home loss to Austria, with Paul Gallagher making a right hash of a kick out as I recall.

I was at Hungary game. Was it not Marshall`s debut?

[Orraloon]

53 minutes ago, ironbrew said:

I was at Hungary game. Was it not Marshall`s debut?

Aye, it was. His 2nd cap was a humping from Sweden and he never got another game for 5 years. I'm sure it wasn't all his fault though. He was just a young lad at the time.

[DoonTheSlope]

1 hour ago, ironbrew said:

Seem to remember us getting to playoffs and several full Hampdens during Vogts era. Lots of defeats in friendlies but new players got experience in full and B team which following managers benefitted from.

Most of the 2008 campaign squad came through the Berti era, no doubt it made them better players individually and collectively.

Dean Saunders said yesterday that this Wales squad have been playing in the senior squad since most of them were teenagers and have worked their way through each qualifying campaign and are now in the quarter finals. They've took a few hidings but it's made them stronger. It's hard to argue with him.

On reflection Berti wasn't all that bad

Edited June 26, 2016 by DoonTheSlope