SCOTLAND goalkeeper Craig Gordon believes the national team can come of age in the current World Cup qualifying campaign.
Gordon is one of several of George Burley's first-choice team to have plenty of experience, and caps, at a relatively young age.
The Sunderland keeper, 25, will earn his 34th cap on Saturday when Scotland face Norway at Hampden.
The likes of Ja
mes McFadden and Darren Fletcher are no older and have even more caps than the former Hearts keeper.
Gary Caldwell, Scott Brown and Shaun Maloney are also in their mid-20s, along with Stephen McManus, who is likely to come back into the team after serving a one-game ban for the Norway game.
And Gordon believes the experience they have already mustered can help Scotland as they bid to qualify for their first finals in 12 years.
"In my early days there were a lot of young players in the team with not a lot of caps to their name," he said. "Now, with the big-game experience we have got behind us in different environments and different stadiums, it is only going to help us in the long run.
"All us guys on 30-40 caps still have a lot of time left in our careers. We could quite conceivably have six to eight years left. Hopefully, I'll be a bit longer because I'm a goalkeeper.
"We are still in our mid-20s but to have that experience means we are able to help the next batch coming through."
Burley this week tipped Fletcher, 24, who will captain Scotland tomorrow in the absence of the injured Barry Ferguson and McManus, to break the 100-cap mark.
And Gordon believes several of the squad could come close to that milestone – providing they start qualifying for major finals.
"If you get to one or two major finals then the preparation matches and the tournament itself would push the caps up," he added.
"You have to avoid injury and play in pretty much every match for the rest of your career to get to that. We need to get there if any of us are going to get near that."
To get to South Africa in 2010, Scotland will almost certainly need to finish above Norway in their group.
And Gordon admits striker John Carew, who scored against him for Aston Villa last month, is a major threat to that aim.
So he is calling for his outfield players to relieve the pressure on him by cutting out the supply.
"On his day, he really is a world-class striker," Gordon said. "He's great in the air, he's big, he's strong, he's quite quick as well.
"He really does have a bit of everything and when he turns it on there's really very little you can do to stop him. They've got the likes of John Arne Riise to supply him with long throws and crosses into the box. They have the capability of putting a lot of balls in the box and putting you under a lot of pressure and that's something that we will have to deal with."
The full article contains 530 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
