The euphoria was certainly short-lived. Last night Scotland was given a bit of a doing by Ukraine in Kiev's Olympic Stadium. Let's not be under any illusion: Ukraine was the better side, and deserved to win. That said, however, the Ukranian's task was made a lot easier by a referee who seemed to like booking Scotland's players for challenges that escaped without a word when committed by them. I lost count of the number of times the Ukranians were awarded free kicks around the Scottish penalty area (and they were all legitimite free kicks - no argument there), when similar fouls committed by Ukranians in the vicinity of their 18-yard box were allowed to go unpunished. It was also strange how some Ukranian players had a tendeny to fall down a lot - clearly looking for free-kicks and, on at least three occasions, penalties, and tried to get Scottish players booked - and failed to deceive the referee who was clearly aware that there was a lot of 'simulation' (or diving) going on, yet who still managed to escape without seeing a yellow card - even although 'simulation' is a bookable offence. The coup-de-grace came, however, with about five minutes of the game remaining, when we had a player sent off for encouraging Shevchenko to dive (and he didn't really need a lot of encouragement to do so), a travesty that was quickly followed by the same Ukrainian clearly diving in the penalty area and cheating his way to a penalty kick, from which he scored to make it 2-0. Make no mistake, though, despite the often poor refereeing and Shevchenko's diving, Scotland was outplayed. While I would have been delighted had we snatched a result, I would be lying if I said we deserved anything other than what we got. The better team won on the night. Any despondency I may have been feeling at the result in Kiev soon evaporated, however, when the results from Zagreb (eleven red berries for eleven red faces?) and Paris came in. Scotland is now the only Home Nation topping its qualifying group (a group, moreover, that contains both World Cup finalists: Italy and France).
