How Scotland won the Kirin Cup #2: Saitama was oasis in desert for Walter’s nearly men
Scoreless triumph was vintage Smith – then all manager had to worry about was that nobody was (still) in jail the next morning
By Stephen McGowan
Japan opened the 2006 Kirin Cup with a loss to Bulgaria before Scotland thumped the same opponents 5-1. Avoiding defeat in the second game against the hosts would win the tournament, a scenario tailor-made for the tactical pragmatism which served Walter Smith so well throughout a glittering career. Even if he told a colleague later that his throat was so dry from the night before that he could barely get his team talk out.
Coached by Brazilian icon Zico, Japan planned a big send-off before heading to Germany for the World Cup finals. Playing the game in the space-age Saitama Stadium, the host nation did their bit to make Scotland feel at home by conjuring up the kind of biblical rain usually seen in Millport in the middle of July.
“The first game had felt like any normal friendly,” says Steven Caldwell. “The second was like, ‘Ooft, this is one you want to play in.’
“I remember pre-match stuff like dragons on the field, a show for the fans. There was a big crowd. I was gutted I wasn’t involved in that game. It was such a spectacular build-up.”
The Scots managed to weather the storm. Half-time created some respite opportunity for yours truly to phone Slater, Hogg and Howison in Greenock and submit a verbal offer for a house already gone in the midst of the fevered, overheated property market of 2006. Japan came to know how that felt, spending the second half knocking loudly on Scotland’s door, unable to find a key to secure a way in. Somehow or other, the lock held firm.
“We were pumped 0-0,” Caldwell acknowledges. “But we defended well and hunkered down and managed to win the Kirin Cup. They were so up for it because they wanted to give their fans a big send-off. And we were just hanging in there in a classic Walter game.”
In the post-match mixed zone afterwards, coach Archie Knox, drafted in to cover for the unavailable Tommy Burns, marched up to the man from the News of The World and, with a nod to Smith and Ally McCoist, asked: “What the f*** did you do to them last night?”
Presented with a trophy taller than Chris Burke, captain David Weir painted on a rictus grin for the cameras while posing for pictures with a huge cheque. “It was for something like £10,000 from the sponsors from memory,” recalls team doctor John MacLean. “But nobody had told the players that there was a prize for winning the tournament.
“There was no real bonus up for grabs for the players in those days and I don’t know if the SFA were trying to keep the winners’ prize quiet or not, but the cat was out the bag when David was handed this giant cheque which was 10 feet by three feet.”
The £10,000 would barely have covered the bar bills at the end of a night of celebration when the only thing missing was Jimmy Johnstone swaying unsteadily from side to side in a Largs rowing boat. “I still think of that night out,” laughs Caldwell. “Brilliant.”
Brewing company Kirin set the ball rolling by laying on a few crates of the sponsors’ product in the changing room. “We had a bottle or two and I remember Walter coming on the bus and saying, ‘Listen boys, you can have a night out and a few beers, just make sure you are ready for the bus in the morning.’”
The rest of Part II is for paid subscribers. Been waiting for the right moment to support the best football writing in Scotland?
A long season finally done, Smith granted his assent to cut loose and enjoy a night out on the tiles, with one critical proviso. “Walter was a fantastic people manager and had an ability to get the staff all together to a point where we would have done anything and everything for him,” adds MacLean.
“He was fine with the staff having a drink of an evening, but we would always make sure that one of us never had anything to drink. You are there to look after people. Players, staff, SFA folk and, from time to time, journalists.
“So, I was probably one of the more sober ones on that final night. We all went to a restaurant, and it was shoes off, sitting cross-legged on the floor at a low table.
“Lovely food, great people then the boys gradually received the nod from Walter to go and do their own thing.
“I was the party pooper by coming home early at 4.30am and, as a couple of more drifted in, there was one for the road at the hotel bar.
“All that mattered to Walter was that everybody was on that bus at 8am and nobody was in jail. Or still in jail…”
While journalists retired to the Hobgoblin in Roppongi to watch Hearts see off Gretna in the Scottish Cup final — before progressing to a night of karaoke with BBC pundit Jim Duffy — players sought out a bar to watch Liverpool v West Ham in the final of the FA Cup.
Rumours of an unnamed player landing in police custody after dancing on the bonnet of a taxi persist. Unconfirmed, the old maxim of ‘What happens on tour’ holds firm after all these years.
One or two had previous when it came to missing a flight home from the Far East. In May 2002, a young James McFadden was forced to apologise for a breach of discipline after a game in Hong Kong. After a function in the British Embassy, the team had moved on. MacLean had knocked on McFadden’s room door the following morning to find his bleary-eyed room-mate Michael Stewart yanking it open.
“We asked Michael where he last saw him and he said, ‘In a big high-rise block.’ This was Hong Kong, remember. That didn’t narrow it down very much…”
Lightning threatened to strike twice when the Caldwell brothers returned to their shared billet as dawn broke, a mere two hours before the bus was due to leave at 8am. Tired and emotional — bladdered would be another way of putting it — the siblings made the critical error of lying down on their respective beds for a rest.
“So, we shut our eyes and had a wee sleep,” recalls Steven Caldwell. “I will never forget that room door getting banged at 8am like the hotel was on fire. Richard Simpson, the team liaison man, was shouting, ‘Come on, everybody’s on the bus.’”
Simpson wasn’t alone. In a flashback to Hong Kong, the team doctor was also dispatched to the 40th floor to help the Caldwells downstairs in time to catch the bus transporting them to the airport. In the circumstances, using the glass lift was unavoidable.
“It literally took 10 minutes and repeated phone calls before either of them came to the door,” MacLean admits now. “The two of them were standing there in their underpants, still very much drunk.
“And they had to be encouraged to leave and encouraged to get dressed. They also needed the people banging the door to help them pack a bag as well.”
Caldwell takes up the story. “We jumped up and put our blazers on and dampened down our hair a bit. We had to throw everything in a bag because we hadn’t even packed, which tells you how young and stupid we were.
“We get on the bus and Walter is giving us the stare. He says, ‘I might have guessed youse two would be late. I might have guessed it would be the Caldwells.’
“So, he’s laying it on with a trowel and as we were walking up the back of the bus the boys are all cheering.
“It was just a brilliant, jovial atmosphere and the first and only time I was ever late for a bus. Eight minutes or whatever it was. We were mortified.”
While the memory provokes laughter, the episode decimated MacLean’s supply of aspirin and paracetamol ahead of a long flight back to London.
“Very few of the players who made it onto the bus were sober. And, of course, that was where someone decided to draw the famous artwork on Faddy’s face…”
The handiwork of Lee McCulloch and team masseur Billy McCulloch may, or may not, have been phallic in nature. MacLean also remembers helping Stewart ‘Omar’ McMillan, a legendary member of the Scotland backroom team, into a pair of socks.
“He was so drunk he couldn’t get down to his feet to get them on himself. You don’t necessarily want to start the day helping a man of mature years in his underpants into a pair of socks, but it was that kind of night.”
Scotland would return to compete in the Kirin Cup once more in 2009. Smith was back at the helm of Rangers by then and the chaos of the George Burley era was epitomised by an injury-depleted squad conceding two late goals — one an o.g. by Christophe Berra — in a 2-0 defeat in Yokohama. The hosts recognised few of the names in the starting 11 and Burley apologised to his opposite number for the undercooked paucity of his line-up.
The national team would win one more trophy — the little remembered Qatar Airways Cup — after Matt Ritchie’s goal sealed a 1-0 win over the Middle Eastern nation at Easter Road in 2015. During the period of famine and drought for the national team between 1998 and 2021, winning the Kirin Cup became a bigger deal than it should have been.
Now a respected analyst with a Canadian sports network, Steven Caldwell will cover this summer’s World Cup while wondering once more how it might have felt to have played in one himself. During a slightly unfulfilling Scotland career of 12 caps, it just never happened.
“It was a shame because we were close to qualifying for tournaments a few times during that era. Between 2005 and 2010 we were close but just missing that wee bit of quality where it mattered.
“That was the peak years of my career, and I was always hopeful that I would make a major tournament with Scotland, but we just never seemed to get over the line.
“There was always that anxiety that you might never get to a major tournament and sadly that proved to be the case for that Kirin Cup team.”