Scotland manager Gordon Strachan is confident his players are ready to renew international football’s oldest rivalry after a 14-year wait.
The Scots will walk out at Wembley to do battle with England in the Teenage Cancer Trust challenge match knowing their boss believes in them.
So much so, that he cancelled a training session scheduled for the stadium last night, arguing that they didn’t need it.
It was back in 1999 that the Auld Enemy were last faced in a Euro 2000 play-off and against all expectation even north of the border Craig Brown’s side won 1-0 on the night in London thanks to a Don Hutchison header.
It wouldn’t have been Scotland, though, had the pleasure not been mixed with pain and that victory still left them 2-1 down and out on aggregate.
The fact that Kevin Keegan’s side sneaked through to the finals thanks to two Paul Scholes goals at Hampden in the first leg of the tie hurt immensely.
The subsequent years have not been any kinder to the Scots, to say the least. For, as it has turned out, that would be the closest they would come to qualifying for a major tournament and there have been plenty of embarrassing results since, not least in the current campaign.
However, the win in Croatia in the last World Cup qualifier, even though our hopes of making it to Brazil had long gone, has given Strachan and his squad renewed energy and enthusiasm.
Strachan feels his players can cope with the occasion, arguing he may not have to make much of a pre-match speech. Perhaps significantly, his reason for giving the training session a miss was because he thinks the Scots are all set to go.
“They’re fine, they’re good and they’re looking forward to it,” he said.
“We had a couple of sessions on Monday and a session this morning.
“We were thinking about going to Wembley to train but with the journey over there maybe an hour, and then coming back, we knocked that on the head because I think they have done enough physical work.
“We have a couple of meetings, analyse from video stuff and that’s about it.”
As for any Braveheart rhetoric, it appears the wee man will be giving it a miss as kick-off looms.
“Some guys like a motivational speech to help them get along, some are self-motivated,” said Strachan.
“The time has to be right. You might have to speak to individuals to put them in a good place.
“You might have to speak to the group to put them in a good place. The timing has to be right but these boys are self-motivated so I don’t think I’ll have to do too much.
“The atmosphere once we get there, once we travel to the game, will definitely affect them in terms of positivity.”
Strachan has refused to make any promises to club managers who want him to go easy on their players this evening with league games coming up.
There will be a maximum of six substitutions allowed but the national coach won’t make a series of pre-planned interval changes, instead opting to use his bench only with a view to getting a positive result.
“A couple of managers have asked me about that but I have to see how the game is going,” he said.
“It would be wrong of me to promise them that a player is going to play 45 minutes and then they end up playing 70 because of the circumstances of the game.
“If it is two centre-halves and I say one has to come off after 45 minutes but the other one got injured in the first half and I had to keep him (first one) on.
“So I wouldn’t promise any manager, all I did say was that I will look after your players as much as I can. I have been there myself.
“I remember asking an international manager to look after some of my players because we had Champions League games and he took two of them off with one minute to go oh thanks.
“So I think the managers will appreciate in this game that both sides are going to try to win the game.”