18/11/07 The Day After

It's Saturday night in Sauchiehall Street after the big match!


















I had a fairly downbeat attitude about the Scotland v Italy game.
If you'd offered me a draw before the game, I'd have snapped your hand off and let my hopes rest on serial-chokers France coming a cropper in the Ukraine on Wednesday.
I'd enforced a media blackout all week as the build-up was doing my head in bigtime.
Although I did unfortunately manage to catch a bit of Chick Young on Friday describing how the team had received a good luck message from Sean Connery.
Chick then went on to describe how he hoped this would "stir" the Scots and "shake" the Italians.
I don't think I've ever seen a news feature on Sean Connery without some journalist twat "cleverly" attempting a comic bastardisation of the "shaken, not stirred..." line.
Lazy, lazy, lazy....
Anyway, a host of local dignitaries gathered at Parko Towers to watch this spectacle.
Shortly before kickoff there was a loud bang, and a light bulb was fired out of a lamp in my living room like a mortar round, and it all went dark.
One of the strangest things I've ever seen.
There was a short, inconclusive debate on whether this represented a good omen in advance of the match.
Paul D. piped up before the match started and said "Imagine Italy scored in the first minute...!"
Italy then proceeded to score in the first minute...
The chances of Paul D. being invited back to view any upcoming World Cup qualification matches in my gaffe are roughly equivalent to that of San Marino going on to lift the trophy in South Africa in 2010.
(I'm joking of course...)
In terms of atmosphere in my flat, it was as if someone had stuck a knitting needle into a balloon.
It should have been 2-0, as Italy were wrongly given offside for a legitimate goal.
Then Scotland equalised with an offside goal.
Then Scotland had two glorious chances to take the lead and send the country into Dreamland.
I love the fact that people who are normally fairly quiet and reserved get so emotionally involved watching football ...shouting at the telly and getting caught up in it all.
Jim's living room was buzzing!
Then...in injury time...Italy scored...disaster for Scotland...
Now if one were to look at things rationally, you could say that there were three key decisions that the officials got wrong.
Italy scored a legitimate goal disallowed for offside, Scotland's goal should have been given offside, and there was the inexplicable free kick given against Hutton which led to Italy's winner.
So you could say that Scotland benefitted from 2 out of 3 of these.
However, it's still a hard one to take.
There will always be a percentage of wrong offside decisions given in football.
It's very easy to get one wrong...you just have to accept this.
However, in all the time I've watched football, I've never seen a more bizarre free-kick given.
The Scots player had the ball and he was barged off it by the incoming Italian who made no attempt to play the ball.
The freekick was awarded to Italy by the linesman (who had a perfect, unobstructed view of the incident).
So from being fairly downbeat about the match before kick-off, I'd inevitably got caught up in all the emotion and was left feeling flat as a pancake at the end.
I couldn't even get pissed as I was on-call from work.
I've got a gig at The Stand tonight as well...will people be ready to laugh?
(just getting my excuses in early...ha ha!)