CRAIG Brown has been drafted in to speak to the Scotland players and take questions from them about Macedonia ahead of next weekend's opening World Cup qualifier in Skopje.
Brown resigned as Scotland boss in 2001 but current manager George Burley brought him into his scouting network at the last moment to study the Macedonians. Burley will allow Brown to take centre stage and address the Scotland squad in their hotel on the eve of the match.
"Craig's international experience is terrific," said Burley. "I always got on really well with Craig. He was the last person to take the country to a major tournament. Utilising that knowledge is going to help.
"Some players might want to go up to Craig afterwards and say how did the right winger play' or some other question. Craig will be there on the spot so that means there can be good interaction with the players."
Bobby Williamson was originally asked to scout the Macedonians but he had to hand over that responsibility when he took over as manager of Uganda earlier this month. Brown has taken over the World Cup role, with Paul Hegarty doing the information-gathering on Scotland's next group opponents a week on Wednesday, Iceland.
"All the players have been sent DVDs of Macedonia and Iceland," Burley added. "Craig is going to come to the hotel to go through all the different aspects and on the Sunday evening Paul Hegarty will come and talk about Iceland."
Burley has targeted 17 points as the minimum necessary for Scotland to qualify from Group 9 - which also contains Holland and Norway - and make it to 2010 World Cup in South Africa. But he warned Macedonia were good enough to take points off every team in the section. "I think they are good enough to do that. They have played against all the top teams and done well. I think they will take points off all the teams in the group."
Burley was an unused squad member at the 1982 World Cup in Spain and will use that experience to inspire his players.
"I was over in Spain and although I didn't play, when I look back at my memories of my football career - 400 games for Ipswich, the FA Cup, Uefa Cup and so on - just being in Spain will always stick in my memory. The atmosphere, the fans, seeing us playing Brazil.
"That's what I've said to the squad. If they manage to get to a World Cup they'll have memories which will never fade."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article