Bill Leckie: If we always sing when we lose then we’ll never know joy of winning

JUST after 1am yesterday, a guy called Rene Spintler staggered across the finish line of the Zugspitz Ultratrail, 26 hours, 39 minutes and 14 seconds after the starting pistol sounded.

He’d burned his thighs slogging up 16,666 feet of freezing-cold mountain, knackered his knees bouncing down the other side, then reduced his lungs to burst Mitres trying to make it over the line before cut-off time.

Of the 582 male competitors who’d left Garmisch at 10.15pm on Friday night, he was the last to complete the 65.24-mile course.

By the time he was hauling his kit off, the medal ceremony had been over for four hours.

The amount of physical and mental pain the guy must have been feeling is unimaginable.

Unless, that is, your own ultra-challenge of choice over the weekend was to support Scotland in Munich.

Because as energy-sapping, soul-destroying, head-mangling experiences go, I’d put our 5-1 humping by Germany up there with any mega-marathon.

Or, to be more precise, the few hours that followed the final whistle were.

The game itself was bad enough, a dire performance and a result that drained us of optimism and energy as totally as in my own marathon- hobbling days, when I’d get to halfway and see the proper athletes swishing down the other side of the road.

That was us against Germany — players in Dark Blue who had trained like bears, and could genuinely see themselves smashing personal bests over 26.2 miles.

But whose legs turned to lead once they realised who and what they were trying to keep pace with.

Yet once the sting from our wounded pride subsided, the result itself wasn’t what really got me.

It was the REACTION to that result from way too many of our fans that hurt like poor old Rene’s blisters.

As we fought to get away from the Munich Football Arena way after midnight, the roads were littered with Tartan Army stragglers trying to work out what city they were in.

The shuttle bus that promised it was heading for the city centre, but which actually dropped 60 baffled passengers in the middle of Easterhouzen, bounced to Yes Sir, I Can Boogie and No Scotland, No Party.

Later, colleagues would tell us the U-bahn subway train was the same.

Then, back at the hotel, the bar was hoaching. Jumping. Bouncing. It was like we’d won the tournament itself.

And right then, I wanted to be anywhere else on the planet.

Right then, I’d happily have swapped places with Rene Spintler.

All I could think was, ‘Get me out of this madness and back to Garmisch, where I can be miserable in peace’.

It was like turning up to a wake and finding that someone had booked a DJ.

Didn’t they know we were meant to be in mourning?

This isn’t just a grumpy old man talking, either, because in our hotel at least, we weren’t surrounded by the Young Team out to wring every last second out of their first overseas adventure, pumping or no pumping. This was people my age.

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I can still see two blootered, middle-aged guys, dragging the dead weight of a mate who was 80 if he was a day towards the lifts.

And I mean dragging, because the old boy was buckled, his brogues scraping along the floor tiles.

He didn’t need his bed. He needed paramedics and a stomach pump.

Yet were his muckers concerned for him? No. They were singing — altogether now — No Scotland, No Party.

It made me furious. Not the three of them in particular.

Plenty among us will either have been the draggers or the dragee at some point in our lives.

They just tipped me over the edge in despair at this tacit acceptance that, 26 years on from our last finals abroad, this was how to react when our cue finally came and we fell off it into the orchestra pit.

Do we want the Tartan Army to riot in defeat? Course not, don’t be stupid.

But surely to goodness we’ve learned enough from the vacuum we’ve spent an entire generation in to find some happy middle ground between setting fire to the city, and acting like the result doesn’t matter? Or is it just me?

Am I alone in reacting to defeat by just wanting to sit in a corner, take the edge off the misery with a pint, then get to bed and hope to sleep it all away? Hopefully not.

Hopefully, of the several million of us we’re told were in Munich, 90 per cent will have been too sick to the guts to hit the town post-match.

Because, for me at least, that’s what football should do to us.

If all we ever do is cheer when we lose, then we’ll never know the genuine joy of winning.

More importantly still, if we party on regardless no matter the score, there will never been any pressure on the team to do better.

They will start to see international camps as an escape from the demands fans put on them at club level.

That’s no good for anyone. That’s not progress.

My dream has always been that Scotland would become a team capable of holding our own at tournaments like these, backed by a unique, world-class set of fans.

We’re not far away from achieving that first part, I genuinely believe that.

We have enough good players, and a good enough manager, to make the leap, starting on Wednesday night against Switzerland.

The second part? Sorry, but as the weekend served to remind us, we’re still far more concerned with showing off than showing the party how much defeat hurts us.

So, sure, fire on with all the fake, look-at-us nonsense if we fall short again in Cologne this midweek.

Give it No Scotland, No Party until you’re tartan in the face.

Just don’t expect me to join in the conga.

Because I’ll be the guy in the corner grumbling — No Winny, No Pointy.

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