The Scottish National Football Team Quiz

Answer: Kennington Oval

Both sides played a formation of 2-2-6! Because the Scots could only fund eight return tickets to London, three of the Scotland team were London residents. One of these was Lord Kinnaird who "qualified" to play for Scotland because he had an estate in Perthshire.

The match finished in a 4-2 win for England. The previous meeting between the two countries had also been played on a cricket ground, that of the West of Scotland club at Hamilton Crescent in Partick.

Answer: Alex Jackson and Alex James

This was an especially remarkable performance as the Scottish selectors had left out several of the most famous and experienced players of the time, including David Meiklejohn of Rangers and Jimmy McGrory of Celtic. What was more, eight of the team were "Anglo-Scots", playing for clubs in England, one of them, Tom Bradshaw of Bury, winning his only cap!

Alex Jackson of Huddersfield Town scored a hat trick with Alex James, then of Preston North End but later an Arsenal star, scoring the other two.

Answer: Norway

In May and June 1929 Scotland played a three match tour in Europe, defeated Norway 7-3 in Bergen before going on to draw 1-1 with Germany in Berlin and beating the Netherlands 2-0 in Amsterdam. Both Norway and the Netherlands later regarded these games as unofficial matches.

All of the Scottish players in these matches played for Scottish clubs, no Anglo-Scots taking part. Only one player from Rangers participated and none from Celtic.

Answer: The SFA refused to participate unless Scotland won the Home International Championship

Like the other countries of the United Kingdom, Scotland had ignored the first three tournaments. In 1950 they were invited to enter, but decided only to go if they were British champions. Having beaten Northern Ireland 8-2 and Wales 2-0 they needed only a draw at Hampden against England, but lost 0-1.

Ironically, England did participate and suffered one of the most embarrassing defeats in their history, losing 0-1 to the United States, then hardly a world power in football.

Answer: Andy Beattie

When Scotland qualified for the World Cup finals tournament in 1954 the SFA decided to appoint a manager for the warm up matches and the tournament itself. However, the players were still chosen by a selection committee. Astonishingly, only thirteen players travelled to the tournament, which was held in Switzerland. After losing 0-1 to Austria in the first match, Beattie resigned dramatically. Although he gave no reason, it was believed by most that interference from the selection committee was the reason. Without a manager, the team went on to lose 0-7 to Uruguay in the next match.

After this experience, it is surprising that Beattie became Scotland manager again in 1959, this time staying for twelve matches.

Answer: Denis Law

At the time of his debut, during which he scored, Law was playing for Huddersfield Town. Later in his career he represented Manchester City, Manchester United and the Italian club, Torino. Nicknamed "the Law Man" he gained fifty-five caps, scoring thirty goals. His last match for his country was against Zaire in the 1974 World Cup finals tournament in Germany.

Answer: Jimmy Murray

Jimmy Murray of Heart of Midlothian scored the equaliser in the opening tie against Yugoslavia. Mudie (Blackpool) and Collins (Celtic) scored in the 2-3 defeat to Paraguay and Baird (Rangers) scored against France, Scotland losing 1-2. Remarkably, given the experience in 1954, Scotland did not appoint a manager for this tournament to substitute for Matt Busby, who was still recovering from the Munich air crash in February.

Instead, the team trainer, Dawson Walker, gave the team talks before matches.

Answer: Ronnie Simpson

Simpson was 36 years and 196 days old when he played at Wembley. He has already had a long career, possibly setting another record when he played his first game for Queen's Park in 1945, this time as the youngest player to play in Scottish league football aged 14.

He went on to have a distinguished career for Third Lanark, Newcastle United (winning two FA Cup winners medals), Hibernian and Celtic. He also played for the Great Britain team in the 1948 Olympics.

Answer: First team ever to be eliminated without losing a match

Scotland beat Zaire 2-0, drew 0-0 with Brazil and 1-1 with Yugoslavia. With only minutes to go it looked as though Scotland would qualify from their group with a better record than Brazil, but the Zaire goalkeeper made a blunder that allowed Brazil to score the goal that took them through.

Answer: 1992

Scotland won their qualifying group for the 1992 tournament in Sweden. An unlucky 0-1 defeat by the Netherlands was followed by a 0-2 defeat by Germany before Scotland beat the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former USSR) 3-0.

Scotland qualified also in 1996 where they went out (again) on goal difference after drawing with the old opponent the Netherlands, losing 0-2 to England and beating Switzerland 1-0. Only a late goal in the Netherlands 1-4 defeat to England allowed them to take second place in the group. More glorious failure, which has too often been the case for Scottish sides in major tournaments.