Five players missed Georgia debacle but four were fit for Old Firm match

Burley's first game in charge brings back painful memories of the night the Euro 2008 campaign went wrong

RARELY have so many non-Old Firm supporters been so keen to see the starting line-ups for a Rangers-Celtic match. But come Saturday lunchtime, Scotland fans up and down the country will be intrigued to discover whether the (in)famous five of Christian Dailly, Barry Ferguson, Lee McCulloch, Allan McGregor and Barry Robson have all recovered in time to pull on their boots at Ibrox.

George Burley, the new national manager, assured us on Monday that the quintet had withdrawn from the squad to face Croatia in tonight's friendly at Hampden because of genuine medical concerns. Crucially, he also said he doesn't expect many of the absentees to play for their clubs this weekend. But, with a vital Old Firm match just around the corner, Burley's remarks look bold and perhaps naive.

Rangers and Celtic players pulling out of a Scotland match but then being fit enough to play against each other less than 72 hours later is nothing new. It happened five months ago and, for many followers of the national team, the saga will forever stick in the throat.

Last October, Scotland, under the tutelage of then manager Alex McLeish, were flying high in Euro 2008 qualifying Group B and were within touching distance of securing a place in a major tournament for the first time in a decade. While the last match of the section against Italy in November would have a big say in whether the Scots would finish in one of the two qualifying spots, it was the games at home to Ukraine on Saturday 13 October and away to Georgia on Wednesday 17 October that would ultimately shape the campaign.

Sadly – and, perhaps for some, more importantly – there was also an Old Firm game scheduled for the end of that week, at 12.30pm at Ibrox on Saturday 20 October. The whole nation should have been focussed on taking six points from two winnable qualifying games.

The match against Ukraine was well attended by the Old Firm contingent. For Rangers, Alan Hutton, David Weir, Barry Ferguson and McCulloch started, while Kris Boyd was an unused substitute. Celtic's Stephen McManus and Scott Brown also pulled on the dark blue shirt and helped Scotland to an impressive 3-1 victory.

With one win in the bag, McLeish knew that success in Georgia would mean Scotland needed just a point when they faced Italy the following month.

But then the call-offs started coming in. Hutton, we were told, had sustained a calf injury against Ukraine and would miss the pivotal trip to Tbilisi, and Brown was deemed unfit because of a hamstring strain picked up in the Hampden win.

Of the other Old Firm absentees, McCulloch was suspended after landing himself a booking against the Ukrainians, Ibrox goalkeeper Allan McGregor missed the entire double header with an arm injury, Celtic defender Gary Caldwell sat out both games with a knee complaint, and so did Paul Hartley, who was recovering from a hamstring injury.

Whatever the reasons for the no-shows, Scotland simply could not cope – even against a Georgia side who fielded three teenagers, including a 17-year-old debutant goalkeeper. With Brown unavailable, McLeish had to give midfielder Darren Fletcher his first game for five weeks, and the team were comprehensively outplayed from start to finish. Wearing those ghastly red shirts, the Scots were beaten 2-0, and their hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland were all but dashed. They fizzled out completely in November with a 2-1 defeat to Italy in a game that had consequently taken on must-win status.

But what of the Old Firm game? Of the five players that were posted missing against either Ukraine or Georgia because of injury, only one also missed the lunchtime kick-off on Saturday. Hartley remained sidelined for the first Rangers-Celtic game of the 2007/08 season, but his Celtic team-mate Caldwell had recovered from his knee injury and Brown had managed to shake off his hamstring strain. In the blue corner, McGregor's arm was ready for the rigours of an Old Firm clash and Hutton was able to help Rangers to a 3-0 win after his calf injury cleared up.

Neither McLeish nor his employers at the Scottish Football Association opted to invoke the Fifa rule that would have allowed them to prevent both Hutton and Brown from taking part at Ibrox, and this week Burley has said he also has no intention of trying to stop Dailly, Ferguson, McCulloch, McGregor or Robson from playing on Saturday.

All of the injuries sustained by Scotland players both this week and in October could well be genuine – and that is what we are being told by SFA officials – but it is hard to escape the feeling that, far from being viewed as one of the most important games in the country's recent history, the trip to Georgia was seen as an inconvenience at a time when Rangers and Celtic players had apparently bigger fish to fry. It was a game Scotland would win anyway, wasn't it?

That feeling of an unnecessary distraction has resurfaced again ahead of tonight's visit of Croatia and it will only disappear if, as Burley believes, "quite a number" of the Old Firm withdrawals are still sidelined on Saturday lunchtime. We wait with interest this week's headcount.

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