STRUGGLING AMATEURS HOLD FAROES by Glenn Gibbons

Chief football writer DOROTHY Parker's wicked observation on the wooden performance of a famous actress - "she ran the gamut of emotions from A to B" - always seems an appropriate description of Scotland teams in the aftermath of matches such as this latest outing in the qualifying series for Euro 2000.

But, unlike Katharine Hepburn, the object of Parker's acerbic wit, Craig Brown's players have never been celebrated for the range of their talents. There is, invariably, a monotony about their work which makes their semi-regular inability to overcome opponents such as the Faroes quite predictable.

The national team should be credited with faithfully keeping the only promise they ever make - to create a dichotomy of emotion among the country's football followers. Outrage is the commonest feeling among those who watch their efforts abroad through the medium of television.

To the travelling folk, those who actually accompany them on foreign expeditions, there is a sense of realism which precludes widespread wailing and gnashing of teeth. This is not to suggest that setbacks are met with a kind of happy resignation, but there is a grim acceptance, based on previous experiences.

Active supporters appear to have a more truthful understanding of the vicissitudes of international football. Those who danced in the streets of Bremen after the victory over Germany just five weeks earlier would have been neither surprised nor discouraged by having to trudge disconsolately back from the stadium in Toftir to the ferry point at Vestmanna, there to be shipped to the airport at Vagar.

The only difference between what happened in the Faroes and what they had frequently witnessed in the past is that, on this occasion, the opposition scored an equaliser. Until Hans Frodi Hansen's headed goal in stoppage time, Scotland had been doing what they normally do in these circumstances - winning rather uncomfortably by a narrow margin.

The Tartan Army have seen it against Latvia, Belarus, Estonia and the Faroes themselves in recent years and have long since come to accept that the Scots are not in possession of the kind of players who will devastate opponents, no matter the calibre of the latter.

Those who insist that Scotland would be better off not qualifying for the finals of major championships until they have a team capable of joining the great jamborees without being embarrassed when they get there tend to find nourishment for their argument in sub-standard performances against third-rate opponents.

Brown himself has often dwelled on the question of whether it would be more redeeming in the long term to go through certain qualifiers purely as experimentation, in order to build a team worthy of taking to the championship beyond, in this case the 2002 World Cup.

But he has quite properly dismissed the notion on the grounds that his remit is to try to win every match his team plays.

The manager is not one for giving the truth a body-swerve, as he demonstrated when reflecting on the Faroes venture yesterday. "Generally, I thought the level of performance was poor," he said. "We seemed to do enough to win the game without question, but I have to be honest and say that, if they had equalised earlier, it might have been even more difficult for us towards the end.

"Perhaps the problem was that our players thought it was done and that the game was won. Certainly, we had been successfully killing it towards the finish, so what happened with the equaliser made the whole thing a major disappointment."

Even the way in which Hansen scored that equaliser, however, testifies to the providential quirks on which a football match can turn. Tommy Boyd, the Scotland captain who had delivered another stout performance, was designated to pick up Hansen at the corner kick taken by the Faroese substitute Uni Harge.

As he moved towards his target, he was impeded by his team-mate, David Weir and Hansen was allowed the free header which he bulleted past Neil Sullivan from the left side of the area. These things happen in crowded penalty boxes, but, as Brown said, "You can analyse the loss of a goal all day and it won't change anything."

The Faroese manager, Allan Simonsen, was entitled to feel that his own goalkeeper, Jakup Mikkelsen, showed less than perfect judgement when the Scots took the lead in the 38th minute, but he was gracious enough to acknowledge that the visitors at that point were much the stronger, clearly in control of the match and deserved to be ahead.

It was the one moment when Brown's team managed to move the ball quickly and fluently forward, when Kevin Gallacher's cross from the left was delivered so quickly that Mikkelsen was unbalanced, toppling backwards and managing only to brush the ball towards Allan Johnston, who quickly drove it over the line from close range.

The 3-4-3 formation in which Brown had deployed his men had given them the bulk of possession and territorial advantage and they were much stronger physically than the home side. Todi Jonsson, the busy striker who would provoke the aberration which brought Matt Elliott's red card, was the only source of anxiety to the visitors.

Elliott's action, slapping Jonsson just outside the area when the ball was out of play for a Faroese throw-in, was a shocking piece of work for a man who is surely accustomed to jousting with much more irritating forwards in the English Premiership.

Joe Jordan, the old warrior who was on the premises as a TV summariser, voiced his disgust: "If you're being needled by somebody like that, you hit him hard when the ball's in play. Then, you get a booking and the other guy gets the message. You don't do what Elliott did. That was amateur stuff."

That was a summary which, at the finish, could have been applied to the entire Scotland team.


Faroe Islands: Mikkelsen, Johannsen, H Hansen, Thorsteinsson, O Hansen (J Hansen 86), Johnsson, J Joensen (Borg 69), S. Joensen, Moerkore, Jonsson, Petersen (Arge 79). Subs not used: J Hansen, Knudsen, Benjaminsen, Dam.

Scotland: Sullivan, Weir, Boyd, Calderwood, Elliott, Davidson, Dodds, Lambert, Gallacher (Jess 89), Durrant (Cameron 46), Johnston (Gemmill 86). Subs not used: Gould, Whyte, Ritchie, Winters.

A whale of a time? Er, no ...

by Mike Wade

NOTHING had changed in Torshavn the morning after the night before, despite the greatest result in the history of the Faroe Islands' Toftir football stadium.

True, an English language paper was warning young Faroese women to refrain from eating whale meat and blubber, if they planned to have children, but little else outwardly disturbed the tenor of life.

Underneath though, was a pride and satisfaction at the achievements of 11 national heroes, most of whom are part-time footballers. Two are training as teachers while others spend as much time at work in a local nursery school as they do training as athletes.

"People celebrated the draw against Scotland in a polite way," a local journalist, Johannes Hansen, told The Scotsman. "For us, a draw was a victory."

On Saturday, to mark the result, programmes had been hastily rescheduled on both radio and television. On the small screen, interviews with the players and managers filled a 30-minute slot, but radio producers really went to town, establishing a link to the team camp and initiating a radio phone-in.

Hansen, a writer with the Sosialurin newspaper, explained the meaning of the result.

"The Faroes have only played their games at the Toftir stadium since 1992. Before then there was no natural grass pitch of a suitable standard here.

"Since then the best performances have been draws against San Marino and Malta, but this was by far our biggest result at the ground."

There was though a certain regret that it was the Scots who suffered - "We consider them near neighbours" said Hansen.

Callers to the two-hour radio phone-in agreed, many claiming that they would rather have lost to the Scots and drawn with the dastardly Czechs.

It may be remembered that in their encounter in Torshavn, the Czechs' decisive goal came following a throw-in - rather in the manner of Nwankwo Kanu for Arsenal against Sheffield United - while a Faroes player lay injured.

That, however, was but a small regret. The bottom line was that this heroic draw was good for the game in the Faroes. "I would guess there will be 500 or a thousand more for the game with Bosnia on Wednesday," remarked Hansen.

After some good performances last year - narrow defeats against Bosnia in Sarajevo and to Scotland in Aberdeen - Hansen felt that the result on Saturday "wasn't so very surprising.

"A victory might have been possible," he added.

Haven't these Faroese learnt there are no easy games in international football these days?