Hugh Keevins: Make Wembley Murray-field

I covered my first Wimbledon championship as a print journalist in 1980. Bjorn Borg was the defending champion, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were the main challengers to the Swede's then lengthy supremacy.

The notion that a player from Scotland could have gone very far, i.e. beyond the first round, would then have been so fanciful as to have been too absurd an idea to mention out loud in respectable company.

So to be able to salute Andy Murray from Dunblane as the world's number one ranked tennis player is at once an absolute pleasure and a surreal moment at the same time.

And if anybody wants to now declare Murray as the greatest sports person ever to come from this country then be my guest.

Now comes the "But."

But wouldn't it be great if our national football team, bedraggled and disorientated as they are in our World Cup qualifying group ahead of Friday night's game against England at Wembley, could somehow dredge up just a thimble full of Murray's tenacity, dedication and bravery as a mark of respect for his achievements.

At the moment there is an overwhelming tendency to ask what's become of us on the park.

What has it come to when a player with fifty caps, Alan Hutton, would rather not play for Scotland ever again than help Gordon Strachan out in his hour of need ?

Scott Brown might be getting accused of picking and choosing the games he wants to play for his country in the wake of his decision to go back on the retirement announcement he made in August, but at least he answered the call in his international manager's time of need and will play on Friday if fitness permits.

We have truly come to the crossroads where the national team is concerned. Two decades of under achievement have brought about national apathy and, in certain quarters, an antipathy towards the national side.

If it is indeed the worst case scenario in London at the weekend, and England's superior squad has the beating of us, then we know the script.

Strachan is unlikely to hang about flogging a dead horse when, as he's reminded us recently, he is now fifty nine years old and has a real world to attend to away from football.

The now traditional post-mortem will be carried out in the wake of another failure to make a major tournament and the predictable debate about getting back to basics and the attention that has to be paid to grass roots football will be entered into ad nauseum.

On the other hand we could always remember Murray and the fairytale aspect of his ascent to tennis' summit.

This was a game played in public parks by unco-ordinated schoolchildren in the summer holidays when parents had to send the kids out from underneath their feet in order to do something. Scotland was to the game of tennis what Superscoreboard is to parliamentary language and decorum.

But Murray had a degree of ability that he was prepared to work on until his limbs ached and his head hurt. And now look where it's got him.

We are underdogs against England. We have a defence that couldn't keep pigeons out of a loft on a bad night. We have lost key players to serious injury. We have been rejected by experienced personnel who could have helped shore up a troubled team.

We are, if you want to get basic about it, a bang average team with a hard core of supporters who have snapped up close to fourteen thousand tickets for Wembley in the expectation of having a right good weekend in London, regardless of what happens on Friday night.

But we could always try dying on our feet instead of surrendering on our knees. We could always try taking inspiration from our surroundings and showing that pride in the jersey that the players are always banging on about.

We could always remember that when Murray first won Wimbledon he was the first man from the UK to do since before the Second World War. And what gave a guy from Scotland the right to win Olympic gold or become the pre-eminent tennis player in the world?

Determination to succeed and not let himself, or anybody else, down gave him the right. And shocks are still allowed on the football park.

The strip we'll wear on Friday is not our historic battle dress. The anthem we stand up for is not to everyone's personal taste, but this is Scotland's last chance to hold on to the dream of qualification for the World Cup finals in Russia in 2018.

We have virtually nothing left but the professional pride of the individual players who will be put into a formation that the manager must hope is more resolute than the sides who drew with Lithuania and lost to Slovakia in our last two qualifying ties.

Murray might be truly exceptional. a one-off or just the most driven Scot in the history of professional sport in this country, but could we just try honouring his memory by going to London and demonstrating the fact that he doesn't have the national monopoly on bravery in the line of fire?

Going down without a fight would be too much to bear.