By Gary Keown. I was nine. Boy, was I wrong. My mum had my Auntie Iris round. Those final exchanges after Graeme Souness had equalised with a late trundler were sheer agony.
That was my first taste of watching Scotland go into the final group game of a major finals in need of a result to go through. And going out. I have vague memories of watching them play Holland in on holiday with my grandpa. It might have been in Whitley Bay. Or Silloth. However, the recollections are only fleeting. Colin Hendry holds his head in his hands as Scotland's hopes of progress died at Euro ' Players endure a sombre walk around the St Etienne pitch after loss to Morocco in The memories of every occasion since, though, stay pin-sharp.
And they hurt. Recollections of other major life events, for whatever reason, are less vivid. Births, deaths, school, holidays, Balearic foam parties, my first Negroni. Filed away, but the fine details often missing, lost in the mists of time.
Not Scotland botching it up in big tournaments. Those experiences, staging posts, stay crystal-clear. Perhaps because variations on the same theme keep happening over and over again, refusing to let the negative emotions from last time disperse. Perhaps because nothing good, nothing like qualification for the knockouts, has ever come along to dispel them. By the time the World Cup came round, my dad was taking me to Hampden.
Had let me dog school for the morning play-off against Australia. Was happy for me to sit up into the early hours to watch the coverage from Mexico, reparations for years of sending me to bed ahead of BBC2 showing late-night highlights of Jocky Wilson in the World Darts.
