Gordon Strachan must have been smiling to himself when he heard John Carver describe Scotland’s Oriam training base as a health hazard.
Edinburgh’s multi-million pound white elephant might boast the grand title of Scotland’s national performance centre but in reality it’s little more than a pimped-up public leisure centre with a fancy name. A safety risk? It turned out to be the hill that Strachan died on as Scotland boss – knifed in the back by the SFA’s then chief executive Stewart Regan for stubbornly refusing to bow to the Yorkshireman’s demands to decant his team there to the other end of the M8.
That was why Strachan was kicked to the curb by Regan just days after missing out on a place in the World Cup play-offs by a single point back in October 2017. It was nothing to do with football and was carried out despite a surge in results that had seen Strachan’s side clock up a year without defeat before the draw in Slovenia that saw them fall at the final hurdle.
No, it was pure politics stretching all the way from Hampden to Holyrood, where a promise had been made by the SFA to help make Oriam look like it was £25million of tax payers’ money well spent. The rest of the £33m bill was put up by sportscotland, Edinburgh council and Heriot-Watt University.
Strachan was not prepared to play ball – and not only because his team would have had to play second fiddle to Scottish rugby, who are guaranteed preferential treatment whenever they are on site. No, this charade was never about providing our national team with the best of the best to assist with the aim of qualifying for a tournament while permanently beleaguered Regan adopted the foetal position on his comfy throne. Nor was it about boosting fine margins in elite competition.
On the contrary, Strachan argued time and again moving the training base to the other side of the country could only cause serious harm to his chances of ending Scotland’s years in the international wilderness. And it was only when he missed out on Russia 2018 that Regan mustered up the courage to do something about this fiery little insubordinate by removing the blockage.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2-2 draw in Ljubljana, Regan again asked Strachan to reconsider. When Strachan stonewalled him for the final time the axe came down. Technical director Malky Mackay was quickly promoted into Strachan’s role and given an audition for the top job at Pittodrie the following month, where he took charge of the team for a friendly against Holland.
It was no surprise this coincided with Scotland setting up camp in the grounds of Heriot-Watt for the first time. In fact, Mackay went out of his way to speak in positively gushing terms about the Riccarton facility while ignoring everything Strachan had warned against.
Mackay was then tossed to one side by Regan as the blundering CEO set off on a wild goose chase to take Michael O’Neill from Northern Ireland. When he had ballsed that one up spectacularly, he was forced to fall on his own sword.
And a side that had been building some serious momentum was placed in the hands of Alex McLeish. The progress of the national team was set back by years all in the name of pandering to politicians and it’s only now under Steve Clarke that Scotland look like going places again – just not via the Oriam.
Clarke’s straight-talking right-hand man Carver made that clear with his withering assessment of the quality of the playing surface at this so-called centre of sporting excellence.
Perhaps the rebuke was designed to make sure the grass is greener on the other side of the M8 in the unlikely event Clarke has to take his team back there as part of Regan’s legacy contract which ties the SFA in as an ‘anchor tenant’. It defies belief then that such an important ‘anchor tenant’ can’t even reserve enough rooms in the campus hotel for Clarke and his players. That’s the official reason behind the decision for Scotland to train at the refurbed Lesser Hampden this week.
But it seems almost certain Clarke shares many of Strachan’s original concerns over the flawed logic behind being ordered to prepare a team in one city to play a match in another. When Strachan pointed out they risked being snarled up in rush-hour traffic on their way to Glasgow on match night, it was proposed that they made the move to Glasgow on the day before the game instead.
That’s the ridiculous routine Clarke has been stuck with. When his players ought to be relaxing in their digs, going through video analysis, rub downs and last-minute tactics, they’re lugging their kit onto a bus and trekking across the country, losing the very advantages they are supposed to gain by being the team playing at home.
Elite-level players such as Andy Robertson, Kieran Tierney and Scott McTominay are mingling with students, the general public and their camera phones every time they leave their onsite hotel rooms. Strachan knew the playing surface they used at the Mar Hall Hotel was also less than ideal. But at least his team could prepare there in privacy and for as long as they needed, without their stress levels soaring should a lorry catch fire on the hard shoulder at Harthill.
It’s no wonder Strachan saw this madness for exactly what it was – an amateurish, car crash of an idea which, for the sake of everyone’s health, should now be permanently left behind in Clarke’s rear-view mirrors.
