Scotland coast to Aviva victory

IT might be a matter of interest only to the most zealous of statisticians, but the Republic of Ireland and Scotland are joint top of the Carling Nations Cup table this morning after Craig Levein’s team comfortably saw off the feeble challenge of a weakened Northern Ireland side at the Aviva Stadium last night.

Although the crowd of 12,040 was easily contained within just the lower tier of the ground, both sets of supporters did their best to fire up the atmosphere, right from when the anthems were sung as lustily by one side as they were booed by the other.

In a small historical footnote, this is believed to have been the first time ‘God Save The Queen’ was played for a Northern Ireland soccer team in Dublin, the practice having always been to play only the home anthem when they came south to take on the Republic.