Football: At Euro 96 we debated who our best keeper was .. Goram,Jim Leighton or John Collins; DUTCH KEPT AT ARM'S LENGTH.

ONCE again I look forward to a major tournament without the emotional baggage and sense of doom that surrounds any competition with Scotland involved.

Okay, so we've not qualified. No bad thing you might say, given the state of the national side. Personally I'd rather we were going to Portugal.

Only by competing against the best can we ever hope to improve, and surely one of these times rather than being the perennial gallant losers, we're going to be jammy winners.

I also have a sneaky feeling if we had qualified we would have a better team than we've grown used to thanks to a spate of miraculous recoveries in key players.

Despite our woeful record in the European Championships we shouldn't underestimate the role it has played in the history of the good bits of Scottish football.

You will of course remember that wonderful occasion back in 1967 when Scotland beat England 3-2 at Wembley to become unofficial world champions.

The mists of time tend to obscure the fact that as well as being a home international, this clash also doubled as Group Eight in the qualifying rounds for the 1968 European Championships. So that victory at Wembley mattered and gave us a good chance of qualification for the finals.

Scotland's next game was against Northern Ireland. We were now, albeit unofficially, world champions and I remember a bunch of us sitting round the tranny listening to David Francey describing events across the Irish Sea. It was obvious by the number of 'dear oh dears' being uttered by David that things weren't going to plan.

Northern Ireland had this player called George Best and if he decided to turn it on, well, nobody could live with him. Sadly this was one of those days and Scotland were suffering.

All that stood between us and a severe gubbing was the late, great Ronnie Simpson. The Scotland keeper even saved a penalty but in the end a late strike by Dave Clements found the back of the onion bag and we lost 1-0.

Strangely given the claims we made after Wembley, don't recall if Northern Ireland, having just beaten the unofficial world champions, ever claimed the title was now theirs.

Never mind, we were still in with a great chance, we would qualify if we beat England at Hampden. Guess what? We didn't.

This crucial match took place on a bitterly cold afternoon in February 1968 before a staggering 130,771 people. It ended 1-1 with Celtic's John Hughes both saint and sinner. Big Yogi scored with a powerful header but late on missed a good chance to win the match.

I felt an enormous sense of disappointment. Of course you got used to this when supporting Scotland but back then I thought we were a certainty. That was a bitter pie and bovril to swallow.

I felt the disappointment so acutely because 1968 was a year of transition for me,from primary to secondary, childhood to adolescence. The more angst-ridden life became, the more important the role football played. As long as your team was winning you could put up with the plooks and lumps and bulges starting to affect your own soccer career.

So we didn't progress to the next stage. Italy, the host nation, eventually won the tournament and England finished third.

The finals were not, however, without controversy. In the last four, after slugging out a dour goalless draw, the outcome of the Italy/Russia match was decided by the toss of a coin. And what do you know? Italy coincidentally the host nation won it.

It would be a wee while before Scotland came within a sniff of qualification again.

In 1972 the first game of a two-legged quarter-final between West Germany and England at Wembley instantly springs to mind.

England were highly fancied in England that is but the Germans in their unfamiliar green away strip won 3-1. Two players made a major impact German midfielder Gunther Netzer, he of the power, grace and ridiculous long, straight hair and a striker known to his team-mates as 'Dicker', ie 'Fatty'. We knew him better as Gerd Muller. Both men scored that night.

In 1984 the pinnacle was the superb semi-final between France and Portugal with host nation France winning 3-2 after extra time.

Then in 1988 it was Holland, so often the nearly men, coming good with Marco van Basten's stunning volley in the final against Russia.

Euro 1992 certainly wasn't short of highlights and a few lowlights too because this was the first year Scotland managed to qualify.

Naturally we lost our first game 1-0 to Holland. I can still hear us all in the pub shouting 'Offside!' in hope rather than conviction as Dennis Bergkamp scored their late winner. Against Germany it was typical heartbreak. During Scotland's best spell Effenberg's cross struck effin' Malpas' boot and floated over effin' Andy Goram into the effin' net. Gutted.

We did, however, consolidate our 'glorious in defeat' status with a good victory over Russia, then the CIS, in our last game.

Paul McStay opened the scoring with a wonder strike that came off the post, struck the back of the keeper's head then trundled into the net. I've always wanted to ask McStay if he meant it.

The keeper was Dmitri Kharine and the ball obviously hit him on the head pretty hard. How else can you explain a few years later when John Barnes asked Kharine if he'd like to join him at Celtic? The big Russian said 'Da'.

Brian McClair made it 2-0 with his first goal in 26 games for his country, a pretty good record for a Scotland striker, before Gary McAllister rounded off a good if pointless win from the spot.

This result prompted then Scotland manager Andy Roxburgh to stick on a tartan scarf and, with petted lip and tears in his eyes, applaud the Scottish fans who were too busy trying to winch a Swedish police woman to notice. Emotions were obviously running high that night, even Richard Gough gave Roxburgh a hug.

Four years later and it was another McAllister penalty we were all talking about although for different reasons. Uri Geller claimed responsibility for the miss but was it for moving the ball just before Gary kicked it or for bending David Seaman's elbow so that the ball struck it?

Then there was Paul Gascoigne's goal, albeit a cracker, that really rubbed salt in the wounds. What made this gubbing so galling was the factwe had done well in our opening match with a creditable 0-0 draw against Holland.

This result was due in no small measure to a reflex save which stoked the debate as to who was Scotland's No.1 goalkeeper Jim Leighton, Andy Goram or John Collins?

Then in our final game, irony of ironies. Scotland took the lead against Switzerland thanks to a superb strike by Ally McCoist. Meanwhile England were 4-0 up against Holland.

At that point we were through to the second stage. It looked as though the Auld Enemy were going to do us the biggest favour possible, right up until Patrick Kluivert went in on goal and slipped one between Seaman's legs.

We were out, gloriously of course. Did England lie down to Holland? I don't even want to go there.

All we had to look forward to was telly pictures of Frank Skinner and David Baddiel's drained faces as England lost the semi-final penalty shoot-out to Germany. Football may indeed have come home but it soon left again.

However, my all-time European Championships highlight comes from the 1976 final in Yugoslavia.

Mistakes by the normally reliable Berti Vogts and Franz Beckenbauer led to Czechoslovakia taking a 2-0 lead. Dieter Muller got one back for West Germany with a spectacular, acrobatic volley.

The Czech goalie, 34-year-old Ivo Viktor, had the game of his life but Bernd Holzenbein headed the equaliser late into injury time. This meant a first major final between two national teams to be decided by penalties. It was then I witnessed one of my favourite moments in football Antonin Panenka's audacious winning kick. Picture the scene. Seven penalties have been taken, seven have found the back of the net despite the gallant efforts of Viktor to save them and German keeper Sepp Maier to psyche out the opposition.

As a player, Maier was an oddity. Tall although anything but graceful. He had an ungainly flat-footed gait but was a formidable stopper. He was also the first keeper to wear huge gloves that made his hands look the size of frying pans.

If the gloves were legal, though, Maier's antics during the penalty shoot-out certainly weren't. He took forever to stand on his line. He complained the ball wasn't on the spot. He was even trying to shake hands with the penalty takers as they stepped up to face him.

Penalty number eight. Up stepped Uli Hoeness. Opting for power, the German's shot went into orbit. This meant if Czechoslovakia scored they had won.

The pressure was now on Maier to pull off a save or force the Czech player into a miss. As usual the big goalie went through his routine.

Offering the taker, midfielder Panenka, a friendly handshake, insisting he place the ball on the spot, having a prolonged discussion with the referee, more offers of handshakes. Eventually the keeper took up his position on the goalline.

Panenka was either the epitome of cool, the Dean Martin of Czech football, or just insane. The strapping midfielder with the big moustache and roguish grin made a purposeful run at the ball then at the last minute coolly feigned and chipped his kick straight down the middle.

With Maier scrambling to his left, arms flailing, the ball floated over him and the line and nestled in the back of the net. Unbelievable. No-one had ever seen anything like this before. 'Poetry' some commentators were calling it.

Maier was after the ref demanding Panenka take the kick again on the grounds that his first one was unsportsmanlike. Unsportsmanlike? Big Sepp obviously had a short memory.

CAPTION(S):

Sepp's by pass: Maier's penalty woe; No arm done: John Collins uses his `chest' to keep out the Dutch