“Haven’t felt that good since Archie Gemmill scored against Holland in 1978” (Ewan MacGregor, as Mark Renton in Trainspotting)

It’s been many years since I watched the once unmissable Sports Personality of the Year programme on the BBC, largely because it has long been a deeply unserious piece of broadcasting.

But it was hard to escape the cringe-inducing clip on social media of comedian Iain Stirling running the full gamut of Caledonian stereotypes by way of marking Scotland return to the World Cup finals for the first time in twenty-eight years.

I don’t think it was deliberately offensive, necessarily, but just crap, not very funny, really lazy and deeply embarrassing. It rolled out some old tropes – defeats to less fancied nations, glorying in English misfortune – when in fact the new generation of Scots don’t remember the former and aren’t really into the latter. I mean, I’ve yet to meet a Scotland fan who has ever mentioned Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal against Germany – which Stirling referenced as an example of our alleged schadenfreude towards the England team’s misfortunes. Or an England fan, for that matter. Frankly, I’d completely forgotten about it until that BBC bouroch last week.

But I think what most gar’d me greet about the whole thing was that the guy was trying in vain to get a laugh by portraying a Scotland that no longer exists, in the aftermath of what was, without any shadow of doubt, the greatest moment in Scotland’s football history.

For all the talk of a divided Scotland, for me the current squad represent a wider unity and togetherness that perhaps wasn’t there before. The dwindling influence of the Glasgow giants of Celtic and Rangers, in both the sporting and cultural senses, means a less rancorous dressing room. Some of the team’s key figures play for Dynamo Zagreb, Bologna, Torino. The indomitable McTominay, of Napoli, is officially the best midfielder in Italy and, by being a key figure in their title winning squad, perhaps the city’s most popular figure since the great Diego Maradona.

And just as the team has moved on, so have the fans. There’s a myth that the footballing disaster that was Argentine 1978 somehow cost us devolution in the vote the following year. But the political and constitutional picture was very different back then. Despite the enormous outpouring of national pride from the hundred thousand Scots for who a pilgrimage to Wembley was a rite of passage, the truth is that by 1979 the SNP had two MPs, having had eleven the year before. Nobody really considered independence a serious discussion.

But now? You’d need to in your fifties to remember the humiliations against Peru and Iran. My football daft sons were born six and eight years after the loss to Morocco at France 98. They don’t consider themselves in the slightest bit British, and they don’t concern themselves with historical failure. You might as well ask them for their memories of the industrial revolution as for their memories, good or bad, of Scotland at a World Cup. Even the fabled boozing and Jimmy hats is, for them, harmlessly performative.

Also – and this is critical I think – they have never known a Scotland that didn’t have at least a degree of self-government, and never not known a Scotland where at least half the population support independence. And not only do young Scotland supporters want it – they fully expect it to happen.

Scotland’s World Cup story is much more akin to that of the hugely deserved SPOTY winner Rory McIlroy – near misses, perseverance, heartbreak, resilience – and finally joy and redemption.

But I think the tragically unfunny skit does do us an all a favour by speaking to a broader truth about how we are represented or, more specifically, how others choose to present us.

We will be the only nation at the World Cup not in control of our own media, and this is how all our stories will be framed until we stop outsourcing our broadcasting – and all the other normal powers enjoyed by other, normal, self-governing nations – to another country. Our major championship football will be streamed from London studios and described by English commentators, so we need to take charge of football coverage as a first step towards reclaiming our broadcasting. Because independence is many things, not least of which is the ability to tell your own story.

But first we need a vote, which will be held the day after we beat England in the final.

Haiti v Scotland
FIFA World Cup
Saturday, 13 June 2025 – 9pm kick off local time, (2am on  Sunday, 14 June UK time)
Boston Stadium, Boston

Scotland v Morocco
FIFA World Cup
Friday, 19 June 2025 – 6pm kick off local time, (11pm kick off UK time)
Boston Stadium, Boston

Scotland v Brazil
FIFA World Cup
Wednesday, 24 June 2025 – 6pm kick off local time, (11pm kick off UK time)
Miami Stadium, Miami