The Replay: Scotland 1 Greece 0. Euro 96 qualifying

Or 56 seconds in the life of Ally McCoist

Hello and welcome to your World Cup weekend. Scotland are surely about to book their place at next summer’s geographically-challenged finals and they find themselves in a situation for which there is a handy precedent, hidden in square-video format, across four different uploads, in a hard-to-find corner of a website called YouTube, to where we shall depart presently.

Some 30 years ago, in August of 1995, Scotland faced Greece with tournament qualification at stake. This time the destination was Euro 96, right across the border there. And just as that short hop, executable via National Express, is almost invisible placed next to the odyssey that could take Scotland across the Atlantic Ocean and anywhere from Vancouver to Mexico City, so qualification for next year’s finals appears a trifle compared to the marathon undertaken by Craig Brown’s team in the middle of the decadent 90s.

Group 8 of UEFA qualification began in September of 1994 and was not concluded until November the following year. Each of Russia, Scotland, Greece, Finland, the Faroe Islands and San Marino played 10 games, yet the decisive fixture fell on August 16, 1995 at Hampden. With three games to play, Scotland were on 14 points. Greece had a game in hand, but were two points back. In the hours before kick-off, Russia had tucked six past Finland in Helsinki and were firm favourites for the first of two automatic qualification spots. After Greece left town, Scotland had the two minnows left (in the days when such fixtures really were automatic wins – San Marino lost all 10 matches, the Faroes were defeated in every game not featuring that opponent) plus a trip to Finland. Beat Greece – who had to go to Moscow in the next round of matches – and the Tartan Army could get to work on their Braveheart cosplay game.