“The time has come, and the wait is over. It’s Scotland v the Czech Republic, LIVE”
BBC One’s continuity announcer provided the most spine-tingling collection of words in this tournament, with the obvious exception of every time ITV say ‘We can now join our commentary team of Ally McCoist …’.
Prior to the Netherlands v Ukraine, ITV’s Gary Neville referred to “the 65 million people of England”.
At least five-and-a-half million of those English people were watching on Monday afternoon as Northern England took on the Czech Republic.
The BBC’s cameras arrived at Hampden a month early for the champions’ open-top bus parade, but fortunately there was a match going on to keep them occupied.
Led by the always excellent Eilidh Barbour, coverage of Scotland’s opener struck the right balance between ‘This is incredibly exciting, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves’ and ‘Actually, we probably should get ahead of ourselves’.
She was joined by Kenny McLean, Shelley Kerr and the always impressive Darren Fletcher. McLean helpfully advised that “If you don’t buy a ticket, you don’t score the goals”.
Steven Thompson was joined pitchside by Paul Lambert, who radiated all the enthusiasm of a G7 leader being forced to make small talk with Boris Johnson. Lambert called on his years of experience in top-level football to inform us that “Ideally we get a win, but it’s important we don’t lose it”. Cheers Paul.
His demeanour was in stark contrast to the warm, enthusiastic and eloquent Andy Robertson, whose interview with Barbour was a wholesome reminder of why he’s such a popular captain.
The most heartwarming moment, however, came after 15 minutes with the sound of Scottish fans shouting “WAAAAAAAAY” when a shot was blazed over the bar.
Between that and Scotland getting our hopes up only to bring us crashing back down to earth, nature truly is healing.
After the match, Thompson asked Steve Clarke if Kieran Tierney stood a chance of returning for the England match. “Yeah, I’m hopeful. I wouldn’t be getting over-excited about it”, replied the least over-excited man in Scotland.
Well, second least. Forgot about Lambert.
